Lisa Collins  

Lisa Collins earned her Master’s in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University Film School, with a B.A. from Yale in American Studies/Photography. Currently, she’s the Sr. Editor/Sr. Segment Producer for Hollywood.com. She wrote, directed and executive produced two shorts: MISS RUBY’S HOUSE, a mockumentary; and TREE SHADE a surreal black comedy that garnered the Gold Medal for Best Alternative Film at the Student Academy Awards, and was invited to festivals including: Sundance, Atlanta, Seattle, Newport, Avignon and Cannes. It headlined PBS’s "Reel New York" series; won several top fest prizes and a DGA award. She work shopped her script, THE GRASS IS GREENER at the Sundance Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs.

With several projects cooking in development, Lisa’s most recent, OSCAR’S COMEBACK is a complex documentary inspired by the Oscar Micheaux Film Festival in Gregory, South Dakota, about an all-white town celebrating its famous native son--early 1900s black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux. Shot over four summers, she’s directed and produced it with co-director/producer Mark Schwartzburt. The doc-in-progress has been awarded grants from the South Dakota Humanities Council and NYSCA.

Coming-of-age in a conflicted, racially diverse Brooklyn and being a first-generation American of Jamaican/Cuban parents serves as a source of endless inspiration, humor and raw material. (8/14)