Borderline

Borderline is a 1930 experimental silent film by Kenneth MacPherson and the Pool Group, starring Paul Robeson. In the film two couples-White and Black-intersect with racial values, each other, and the small town in which they find themselves. The Pool Group consisted of Winfred Ellerman, her bisexual husband Kenneth McPherson and her lover (and Kenneth MacPherson's), the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Borderline was the last film that the POOL group would complete before disbanding and has become a classic of early experimental cinema.

Plot

Adah, a black woman, has an affair with Thorne, a white man, much to the dismay of some of the prejudiced townsfolk and Thorne's wife, Astrid. Adah attempts a reconciliation with her man, Pete, but eventually leaves him and the town. Meanwhile, Astrid goes mad and cuts Thorne's face and arm with a knife, but then mysteriously dies. Thorne is tried but acquitted. Because of the events, the mayor sends Pete a letter asking him to leave town for the good of all concerned.

The border town scenes were shot on location in Switzerland. Real-life partner Essie Robeson co-starred with Paul in this avant garde film which was never shown in public theaters. The filmmakers was most concerned with avant garde film technique and unconventional editing, though one critic who did notice the film noted that in the character portrayal, "Borderline is an attempt...to treat the Negro as a sensitive and intelligent being."

Film and legacy details

For many years, the film Borderline was largely inaccessible to film scholars, with rare copies in a few archives around the world and seldom screened in public. Many film historians of avant-garde and experimental film-making, feel that it represents one of the last, examples of modernism of the 1920s, when many artists had hoped that artistic experimentation and commercial viability need not be mutually exclusive. For feminist literary modernists, it is not only the film that H. D. starred in, but it also serves as a study imbued by her unique aesthetic vision. Highly influenced by the psychological realism of GW Pabst and Sergei Eisenstein's complex montage format, Macpherson embellished this story by portraying the extreme psychological states of the characters.

A booklet that Macpherson and Doolittle wrote to accompany the film concentrated not on narrative coherence but on psychological metaphors. Macpherson was also influenced by Hans Sachs, Winfred Ellerman's analyst at the time of filming. The booklet became a piece later published in the Pool Groups' literary journal, Close Up.^[1]

In May 2006, a presentation of Borderline with a new score written and performed live by British composer and saxophonist Courtney Pine at Tate Modern attracted 2,000 people.

Cast

• Paul Robeson - Pete Varond, a Negro
• Eslanda Robeson - Adah, a Negro Woman
• Hilda Doolittle - Astrid (as Helga Doorn)
• Gavin Arthur - Thorne, Astrid's Husband
• Charlotte Arthur - The Barmaid
• Eldon Gorst - Gerald Oliphant (as Eldon Grant)
• Blanche Lewin - The Old Lady

External links

• Borderline at the Internet Movie Database

Notes