Borderline was the most ambitious of the experimental films by the Swiss-based, British avant-garde movement and production group POOL, centered around Close-Up, the first English-language journal of film theory. Psychoanalysis was one of their key interests, Eisensteinian montage theory, another. Borderline's complex, metaphoric editing suggests the influence of both; director Macpherson (editor of Close-Up) intended to "take my film into the minds of the people in it..." He "dissected everyday events and, in their recombination, invested them with psychoanalytic import." (Anne Friedberg, Millennium Film Journal #7/8/9) Borderline, featuring Paul Robeson and Eslanda Robeson, is fascinating as an early film dealing with racism in white society and for its casual, non-stereotyped portrayals of blacks. Shot in Switzerland, the elliptical narrative develops a melodrama about an interracial love triangle in a small Swiss village. The poet and film theorist H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and San Francisco underground figure Gavin Arthur co-star. The film's visual beauty alone gives resonance to Close-Up's third constant concern, to preserve the delicacy and purity of the silent cinema.