VAUGHAN
COLLEGE
LEICESTER
at 7-30 p.m. on
SATURDAY,
JAN. 9th,
1932

PROGRAMME

Music by the Leicester Film Society String Orchestra
under the personal direction of Mr. W. H. Carter.

PROGRAMME

JANUARY 9th, 1932

KILLING THE KILLER

German, 1929 (1,000 feet)

This is one of the Nature films produced by the Educational Department of U.F.A.

Shown by courtesy of Wardour Films Ltd.

TOURING THROUGH THE CAUCASUS

Soviet, 1928 (1,000 feet)

This film gives impressions of the palaces and estates which, formerly the property of the Tzars and nobility, have now been turned into rest-homes and sanatoria for workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R. Further, the film reveals many natural beauties and historical scenes of Georgia.

Shown by courtesy of The Atlas Film Co., Ltd.

GIANT HARVEST

Soviet, 1928 (2,436 feet)

This film, directed by Lydia Stepanov, was taken on the largest collective farm in the world, "Gigant." It will be recalled that scenes from a typical collective farm were seen in the "General Line," shown at the December performance of the Society. "Giant Harvest", however, deals fully with work and conditions on a collective farm. Its aim is similar to that of Grierson's "Conquest," which it will be remembered was shown to the Society at its first performance in October of last year.

Shown by courtesy of Atlas Film Co., Ltd.

POSTER FILMS

Production: Empire Marketing Board, 1931.

The Empire Marketing Board, under the supervision of John Grierson, recently established a department for film production to advertise the industries of the British Empire. It will be remembered that the two films recently shown by the Society, "Drifters" and "Conquest," were directed by John Grierson.

A Poster Film lasts about three to four minutes, consequently the main characteristics are brevity, which is obtained by sharp cutting, and surprise, which is obtained by trick photography. To a certain extent, the Soviet system of cutting and editing is employed,

Of major importance is tempo, while rhythm is aimed at as a means of unifying the motion of the film. The film commences on a smooth beat, working up to a staccato climax.

The tomato section directed by Paul Rotha, is in three movements. Firstly, still patterns made by the tomatoes with superimposed titles. The tomatoes then go into movement on their own and this is followed by a swift staccato section in colour.

Between tomatoes and titles an experiment in colour has been used. All in regular lengths, various tints indicate various labels of the advertised goods.

As indicated by the title Poster Films are designed to advertise Empire industries and do so in a most effective way.

The following are to be seen: "SCOTTISH TOMATOES," "EMPIRE GROWN TEA," "AUSTRALIAN WINES," "SOUTHEND CARNIVAL TRAILER" (an effort to publicise Southend and Empire Week), "BLACKPOOL TRAILER."

INTERVAL OF TEN MINUTES

BORDERLINE

British, 1929 (5,000 feet)

Production: Pool Films, Terrier, Switzerland.

Direction: Kenneth Macpherson.

In the cast :—

PETE (a negro) - - - PAUL ROBESON

ADAH (his wife) - - - ESLANDA ROBESON

ASTRID - - - HELGA DOORN

THORNE (Helga's husband) - GAVIN ARTHUR

THE CAFE MANAGERESS - BRYTHER

THE BARMAID - - - CHARLOTTE ARTHUR

THE PIANIST - - - ROBERT HERRING

THE OLD LADY - - - BLANCHE LEWIN

"Borderline" is a dream. "Borderline" is a nightmare. The cast it will be observed, is not only racially mixed, but it contains artists of experience and inexperience. Mr. Robeson is an artist of great talent. His wife, Eslanda Robeson, has not appeared on the screen before.

Mr. Kenneth Macpherson, it might be said, stands on the borderline of cinema directors. Certain Russian directors claim greater effects from people who have never stepped before a camera. Mr. Macpherson follows this tradition. He works with Russian methods of approach, and with keen intrepidity.

The welding of the psychic and super-normal to the things of everyday existence is the rare gift of which Kenneth Macpherson shows himself to be possessed in "Borderline."

The magnificent playing with distorted personalities in the "Student of Prague" (shown at the first performance of the Society in October last), startling and dramatic as it was, seems obvious and facile in comparison with "Borderline."

"... Film and life are, or should be, indisseverable terms. In this modern attempt to synchronise thought and action, the inner turmoil and the outer, the static physical passivity and the acute psychic activity, there is hardly one moment, one dramatic 'sentence' that outweighs another. Kenneth Macpherson has indeed achieved a sort of dynamic picture-writing . . . . . . . . So dynamically does his picture move that it seems at times as if he had almost overstepped the bounds even of the most exaggerated screen values. His posed figures are seething with mental turmoil and with psychic discord. They seem sometimes at rest, to be about to fall forward and annihilate us with their intensity as a glacier edge may give some sort of warning to those attuned to natural premonitions." . . .—(Helga Doorn, "Borderline.")

Members are advised to read carefully the story of "Borderline" before the showing of the film. The story will be found enclosed in each programme.

No ingress during the showing of any film.

The Society wishes to express thanks to Mr. Owstell Blakeston and "Close Up" for valuable information regarding "Borderline," and to the London Workers' Film Society for information regarding the Russian films.

The NEXT PERFORMANCE of the FILM SOCIETY
will take place on
FEBRUARY 6th, 1932, at 7-30 p.m.
with a Double Feature Programme

It is hoped to screen "Secrets of the Soul" (Pabst) and "Italian Straw Hat" (Rene Clair).

THE MARCH PERFORMANCE :

will include "Mutter Krausen's Voyage to Heaven." This film has just arrived from Germany and has not yet been seen in England.
Date of performance to be announced later.

B.P. 33275

18

England will be represented at the second
Congress of the Independent Cinema to be
held at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels,
from November 28th to December 1st.
Kenneth Macpherson's "Borderline" and
Francis Bruguière and Oswell Blakeston's
"Light Rhythms" will be screened. I have
not seen "Light Rhythms," but I have seen
"Borderline," and I think we should pray
for England.

Belgiique
Les Beaux Arts
Le Deuxième Congrès International
du Cinéma Indépendant

Nous donnons ci-dessous le programme
complet des manifestations de ce congrès, qui
se tiendra à Bruxelles, au Studio du Palais
des Beaux-Arts, du jeudi 27 novembre au
lundi 1er décembre.

Jeudi 27 novembre, à 21 h. : *Cercle Artistique.*
Concert donné en l'honneur du Congrès,
par le Quatuor de Bruxelles et Mlle Trajin.

Vendredi 28 novembre, à 17 h. : *Studio*. Présentation de films d'avant-garde inédits en Belgique.

Vendredi 28 novembre, à 21 h. : *Union Coloniale*. Festival de cinéma muet, réglé par Autant-Lara.

Samedi 29, à 14 h. 30 : *Studio*. Présentation de films d'avant-garde inédits en Belgique.

Samedi 29, à 21 h. : *Cercle Artistique*. Festival dramatique donné en l'honneur du Congrès par : a) Le Vlaamsche Volkstooneel; b) M. Teirlinck et ses élèves de l'Institut; c) Mme Madeleine Renaud.

Dimanche 30, à 10 h. : *Festival du Cinéma sonore* (Le nom de la salle sera communiqué ultérieurement.

Lundi 1er décembre, à 17 h. : *Studio*. Présentation de films d'avant-garde.

Voici quelques titres de films qui seront
donnés au cours des diverses présentations :

*ÉCOLE ANGLAISE : Borderline,* de Kennet Macpherson; *Light Rythm* de Brugnière.

*ÉCOLE ALLEMANDE : Jeux de Chapeaux,* de Hans Richter; *Week-End,* de Walter Ruttmann.

*ÉCOLE RUSSE : L'Homme à l'appareil de prises de vue,* de Dziga Vertoff; *La Terre,* de Dovjenko.

*ÉCOLE ESPAGNOLE : Fêtes espagnoles.*

*ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE : Cinq minutes de cinéma pur,* de Chomette; *Bateaux parisiens,* de Gorel; des travaux de Clair, Lods, Man Ray, etc.

Le Festival du Cinéma muet comprendra un
film de montage de J.-G. Auriol, traitant de
l'Aventure et le Reportage, ainsi que des sélec-
tions d'actualités belges de Henri Stork,
Charles Dekeukeleire, Josef Buysse, Pierre
Charbonnier.

Le *Festival du Cinéma sonore* comprendra
de bons et de mauvais exemples et les meil-
leurs moments de *Alleluia*, le *Spectre vert*,
*The Big house*, *La grande Mare*, etc.

Rappelons que la carte d'Ami du Congrès,
au prix de 75 francs, donne au titulaire le
droit d'assister à toutes ces séances.

23

Borderline is assault and battery on the unconscious.

niejanoj
nixvebi

This film ( BORDERLINE ) Has nothing to do with the film as you know it: a film of externalized and objective, broad references. It is purely over-tonal and under-tonal, a subjective excursion into the un-conscious, and as such, must be judged on those grounds and on its appeal to the unconscious.

The film REVERBATES with over-tones and the DELIBERATE breaking across of one image and another, increases this REVERBERATION to the climax of Astria's hysteria ... which is like the clash of symbols. It is a film of INFERENTIAL nuances, following ~~following~~ along the lines of the greatest Russian directors, Eiesnstein, Devzhenko (Earth) and in Germany, Pabst.

These methods, now so criticized, are exactly prophetic and the intellectual film of the future will use these methods (this method of over-tone and under-tone, as a matter of course).

Any real innovation must seem discordant or unintelligible to the untrained mind.

Instead of an objectively DISCERNABLE balance, there is a psychic balance of conflicting emotion and rari-fication, (and vulgarity, of hysteria, wroth, comedy etc. etc.) balanced into black and white, which produce your final even tone. (Picasso.)

62

LEICESTER FILM SOCIETY
---

THE STORY OF
"BORDERLINE"
---

A POOL FILM

In a small "borderline" town, anywhere in Europe, Pete, a negro, is working in a cheap hotel café. His wife, Adah, who had left him some time previously, has arrived also in the same town, although neither is aware of the presence of the other.

Adah is staying in rooms with Thorne and Astrid. Thorne is a young man whose life with Astrid has become a torment to them both. Both highly strung, their nerves are tense with continuous hostility evoked by Thorne's vague and destructive cravings. He has been involved in an affair with Adah, and the film opens with the quarrel which ends their relationship.

Informed by Astrid that Pete is in the town, Adah leaves her suitcase, packed for departure, while she goes to look at the hotel where Pete is staying. She is seen by Pete from his window, and he runs out and follows her. In due course they come together again.

Gossip in the café. Malice. Friction. Thorne blames Astrid for his loss of Adah. A little old lady, symbolic of small-town "rectitude," warns the café manager that "the negroes" will bring trouble. "Why blame the negroes," asks the barmaid, "when people like Thorne are at the root of the trouble,"

That evening, Thorne breaks his way into Pete's room, but seeing Adah and Pete together, he realises that they belong indeed to each other.

Astrid has hidden Adah's suitcase. Thorne, angry and befuddled, comes back and searches for it. A violent quarrel breaks out between him and Astrid, the outcome of which is her accidental death.

Small-town "rectitude" becomes small-town wrath. The negro woman is blamed. Under the concentrated pressure forced on her, and shocked by the fatal issues of her association with Thorne and Astrid, Adah vanishes.

Thorne is acquitted.

Pete's sudden hate is kindled, but dies when he visits the rooms now deserted, where the tragedy took place. He returns to the café to learn that the mayor, acting for the populace, has ordered him - as the last remaining foreign and discordant element - to leave the town. He finds Thorne awaiting him. They both realise that what has happened has been beyond them, and brought about by external circumstances - that emnity has been among others, and they themselves mere instruments for its consummation.

Pete goes, leaving the town in peace and the old lady wreathed in beneficent smiles - a scapegoat for the unresolved problems, evasions and neuroses for which the racial "borderline" has served as justification.

9th January, 1932.

From "LA VEU DE CATALUNYA".

CINEMAS.

A GREAT FILM - "BORDERLINE"

This evening STUDIO CINEMAS will present the film by Macpherson, "BORDERLINE".

"BORDERLINE" is the line which constitutes the frontier or border and separates things and countries in the eyes of men, imaginatively in the first place, and concretely in the second.

This line separates races. In the film the cause of the conflict is a negro: Pete, a barman. This in a provincial atmosphere, in which there are two motifs, the café, full of smoke and the smell of drink, and the countryside, clean, splendidly primitive and beautiful. Against this background rises Pete, a creation strong in sane humanity.

Pete is married, but is separated from his wife. One day the latter arrives in the town, not knowing she will meet Pete there.

In the same hotel lives a young couple, troubled by all the restlessness and all the neurotic ailments of the present day. This couple quarrel violently. Pete finds his wife again, but Astrid, the quarrelsome white wife of Thorne, is attracted by the negro. This is noticed by the people and then the scandal begins, and the slow but sure repression of the negro. The conflict breaks out. Astrid is wounded by her husband and the people "en masse" blame Pete.

Then Pete goes away. He leaves the town and leaves, still active, all the prejudice and all the atavism which, in the eyes of the white people, bear down upon the negro.

This is the synthesis of the action of "BORDERLINE". But the film is so strong and so admirably complex that it is not possible to reflect in a few words all the expression and action which go to make up "BORDERLINE", which is an attempt at the realisation of a purely psychological film. It is the visualization at the service of the most opposing passions, the most difficult to define. It is also a film of ambient. And finally, it is a work of considerable film technique.

"BORDERLINE" is, then, an eminently intelligent film production, intended for people who think. It must be borne in mind that it is a film produced by artists, not professionals. Macpherson is a painter, which is still the more striking when we consider the work from the purely filming point of view. "BORDERLINE" surpasses, and by much, the average English and Continental film. The filming of this picture show a sensibility and mastership of the camera which surpasses anything made in Elstree and many of the productions on a big scale coming from the German studios. The artist and the intellectual will find

From "LA NAU".

An English Production of Pure-Cinema

"BORDERLINE"

To fight vulgarity and overcome it is the motto of the producer of "BORDERLINE", which will be shown to the press at a special viewing by "STUDIO CINAES".

It must be admitted that this production is not for everyman; its endless artistic and expressive beauties will not be seized by everybody. And it is not that we think ourselves superior to the majority; but we are more prepared and are therefore able to assimilate the greater part of its beauty at one showing.

It is evident from the start that "BORDERLINE" is not a commercial film, but a production of pure art, and as such would not be understood by the great public, whose taste has been spoilt by the endless number of unbearable stories of the ordinary productions. Produced for the pleasure of the subscribers of the English review "CLOSE UP", this production contains innumerable photographic beauties and a sequence of beautiful ideas expressed with sheer cinematic poesy.

Not only has it all this; it has good and interesting actors and sound direction.

"BORDERLINE" is a "Pool Film". It deals of no place in particular, it may be anywhere in Europe. It is more than any thing else, the "colour line" morally separating the blacks from the whites, a line made rather by society than by man himself.

It condenses an infinity of small details of life, details which make life happy or impossible, and presents to us a negro, good and kindhearted, with no other tragedy than his love and his colour, bravely borne. On the other hand, what are not the vices and mental failings of the civilised race? When these forces are opposed, the injustice of the white man will always triumph, with his lack of comprehension and charity towards the man or woman of a different colour.

The exposition of these ideas is carried out with great daring. The superficial and lighthearted woman, the insignificant lady who upsets everything with her charitable sermons, and causes strife wherever she goes. Kenneth Macpherson, the realiser of "BORDERLINE", has produced a sheer photographic symphony; the camera-work is simply marvellous, the cast of surprising emotional force. One has to see the amplitude of expression of those tragic hands, of those flashing eyes, the wonderful landscapes, the magnificent effects of light, and all that symphony in black and white; not an accusation against anyone, but just a lash of the whip in the face of understanding humanity.

- 2 -

The death of Astrid, the madness of Thorne, the
symbolical movements of the barmaid, the manageress of the
café and the scandal-mongering old lady are international,
and the point of view of the producer of this film, as re-
gards the negro problem, is remarkable.

Altogether, in spite of the harshness of expression
of those fantastic eyes and of the intimate tragedies of the
mentally infirm whites, the work is carried to a tender and
subtle conclusion. On departing, Pete (the negro) finds that
the friendship of the white man and the love and esteem of
the few who knew him are not enough to counterbalance the
force of the white laws, which childishly declare him an
undesirable.

As "BORDERLINE" is an art production, difficult for
the unprepared to understand, it is necessary to explain that
the rhythm of the expressions is equivalent to the rhthm of
words. What other artistes of to-day convey in words, these
convey with their eyes, with their hands, with the scarcely
perceptible movements of the muscles of the face. And es-
pecially the hands of the negro and Astrid, and the stream
of harmony in the landscapes and water, in the ostentatious
foolishness of the barmaid - filling and drinking, filling
and drinking.

However, our mind is too slow to assimilate pro-
ductions of this nature, and it would be as well if "STUDIO
CINAES" could give it another showing at one of its periodi-
cal functions, and it is to be hoped that the amateurs at
these select programs will receive the production with the
respect and attention which this beautiful work deserves,
the first production of Kenneth Macpherson, and in which
appear XXXM actors of the quality of Paul Robeson, Gavin
Arthur and Helga Doorn.