Synopsis
A groundbreaking silent film for its explicit theme of racial prejudice and with an implicit homoerotic subtext,
Borderline is a seething exploration of love, passion and betrayal, directed by
Kenneth Macpherson, editor of the influential intellectual film journal
Close Up (1927-33).
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.
Borderline's formal experimentation finds a perfect match in the contemporary rhythms of Pine's heady modern jazz score.
Prior to
Borderline,
Kenneth Macpherson had made three short films, but this was his first feature and by far his most ambitious effort, released a year after
Dziga Vertov's pioneering
Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
Borderline features the iconic star Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda, and other cast members from the
Close Up collective (intellectuals from the editorial board who called themselves the Pool group) including
Hilda Doolittle later known as
H.D.,
Robert Herring and
Winifred Bryher.
Highly influenced by the psychological realism of
G.W. Pabst and
Sergei M. Eisenstein's montage, the film is a lost classic of the British avant-garde.
Borderline tells the story of a tense, inter-racial love triangle and its deadly consequences. Macpherson embellishes this story by portraying the extreme psychological states of the characters. The result is a unique and complex matrix of racial and sexual tension moving between the boundaries of black and white, male and female and the conscious and the unconscious.