The Pool Group were a trio of filmmakers and poets consisting of H.D., Kenneth Macpherson, and Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman).
The group produced four films[1] of which Borderline is perhaps its best known, featuring the African American activist and entertainer Paul Robeson in the lead role.
[2] The Pool Group was launched in 1927, from Riant Chateau, Territet, Switzerland and consisted of Bryher, Kenneth Macpherson and Hilda Doolittle, better known by her initials, H.D.
Macpherson designed the Pool Group’s logo, which served as the cover of its catalog, showing concentric ripples in water.
[4] Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell.
She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company (founded by Sylvia Beach) and certain publishing ventures.
She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
In Burier, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, the couple, along with Doolittle, built a Bauhaus-style structure that doubled as a home and film studio, which they named Kenwin.
The first issue announced that next month’s contributors would be Osbert Sitwell, Havelock Ellis, André Gide, Dorothy Richardson and Doolittle.
The Pool-books were: Kenneth MacPherson, Pool Reflection (spring 1927); F. L. Black, the pseudonym of Bryher's younger brother John Ellerman Jr.: Why Do They Like It?, with a foreword by Dorothy Richardson (spring 1927), on British public schools; Bryher: Civilians (fall 1927), on World War I; MacPherson's novel Gaunt Island (fall 1927); Oswell Blakeston: Through a Yellow Glass (1928), a complete guide to the cinema Studio; Eric Elliot: Anatomy of a Motion Picture Art (1929), history of cinematography; Bryher: Film Problems of Soviet Russia; Oswell Blakeston's novel: Extra Passenger (1930); Hanns Sachs: Does Capital Punishment Exist?
Most of the books were by the members of the group which had been expanded by the addition of Oswell Blakeston (né Henry Joseph Hasslacher, 1907–1985) who had started his working life in the cutting rooms at Gaumont British.
While dismissing the greater part of British and American film-making as "trash", they also recognized Hollywood’s capacity for better things, hailing films like Greed and The Big Parade as masterpieces.
A pristine print exists however in the Swiss Film Archive, which has recently issued it in DVD form, together with Véronique Goel’s documentary Kenwin, about the house which Bryher and Macpherson built at La Tour-de-Peilz.
with Kenneth Macpherson, wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany it and to distribute to the audience, a piece later published in Close Up.
[8]Paul Robeson is the only professional actor in the film and his desire to connect to a like-minded set of individuals in Europe allegedly led him to play the role of Pete for no fee.
The story revolves around a guesthouse run by a set of liberal, hedonistic young people sympathetic to the emerging black American culture.
Adah though is having an affair with a white man Thorne (Gavin Arthur), who is also involved with Astrid, played by the poet H.D.
When Thorne “accidentally” murders Astrid, the “liberal” Guest House is forced by the authorities to kick Pete out: “That’s what we’re like,” admits the sympathetic Manageress resignedly.
To an extent, Robeson’s character could be seen as reductionist in terms of identity as he tends to be photographed in natural surroundings: sometimes with clouds and the sea as backdrops – the location set in a Swiss Alps border town is important in this respect.
Yet on the other hand this portrays the reality of culture in this period, and besides Pete also is the character that comes out of the situation with the most dignity even when he is asked to leave town.
In the United States during the 1940s, he lived with Peggy Guggenheim, and produced Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy (1944).
During World War II, Bryher devoted her money and energies to helping refugees from Nazi Germany, and Kenwin became an important staging post on the flight.