Borderline

1930 1 hr 3 min

This screening of BORDERLINE is in partnership with The Paul Robeson House of Princeton, which has restored and will be reopening Robeson’s historic family home this year. Princeton Graduate Scholars Camille Mimi Borders and Robin Franklin will join Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson for a post screening discussion on the movie and Paul Robseon's legacy.

Paul Robeson, an All-American athlete, scholar, esteemed baritone, stage actor, social activist, and fellow Princetonian, was a pioneering figure in the burgeoning film industry. Working outside of the studio system, he achieved prominence as a leading movie star and portrayed positive representations of Black characters on-screen. BORDERLINE is a noteworthy entry in his filmography, showcasing Robeson and his wife Eslanda as lovers entangled in a complex web of interracial relationships. This silent film uniquely combines avant-garde, experimental techniques with elements of domestic melodrama. Initially believed to be lost, it was rediscovered in Switzerland in 1983 and subsequently restored by the George Eastman House.

Camille Mimi Borders is a historian, writer, and poet invested in unearthing the lived experiences of African American women. She is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in History with graduate certificates in African American Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Camille graduated magna cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 with a B.A. in History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. After graduation, she moved across the Atlantic, studying at the University of Oxford as a 2018 Rhodes Scholar. There, she received her MPhil in US History with distinction. As a public historian, she is passionate about storytelling and was the inaugural Program Director for the African American Heritage House at the Chautauqua Institution, helping facilitate discussion and craft historical interpretation.

At Princeton, she is writing her dissertation on Black women’s embodied experience of pleasure in the 19th century. She contributed as a researcher to the Toni Morrison “Sites of Memory” exhibition at the Princeton University Library. Camille’s writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Review of Books. Currently, she is a GradFutures Social Impact Fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History assisting the African American Curatorial Collective. Robin Franklin is a PhD student in History and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. Specializing in the cultural and intellectual history of the twentieth-century United States, Robin explores how gendered, sexual, and racial power relations have molded historical experiences of time, selfhood, and desire. He is currently writing a history of bisexual identity. A former musical theatre performer, Robin is also a cinema enthusiast and a regular moviegoer at the Princeton Garden Theater.

Director Kenneth MacPherson

Cast Paul Robeson, Eslanda Robeson, Hilda Doolittle

Country UK

Language Silent

Aspect 1.33

More info on IMDB ››