H.D.’s HERmione and Kenneth Macpherson’s Borderline

“H.D. doesn’t sound modern—she sounds timeless….one of the most riveting stories in American poetry.”
—Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books

To celebrate the reissue of H.D.’s autobiographical novel HERmione, her radical portrait of an artist’s life, New Directions and e-flux Screening Room are pleased to present a screening of Kenneth Macpherson’s Borderline (1930, 60 minutes) on Tuesday, November 8 at 7pm, followed by a discussion with Francesca Wade, author of the new introduction to HERmione.

“Borderline tells the story of an interracial affair that scandalizes a small European village and threatens to tear apart two couples. British film theorist Macpherson infused the melodrama, his first and only feature, with a startling degree of intensity, merging the montage style of Sergei Eisenstein and the psychological realism of G. W. Pabst to convey the devastating emotional effect of racial prejudice and sexual oppression. In the words of the modernist poet H. D., who costars in the film alongside Robeson and his wife, Eslanda, the director “sculpts literally with light. He gouges, he reveals, he conceals.”—Criterion Collection

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility 
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue. 
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space. 
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.