? Photograph by Edith Tudor-Hart
Alfredda Brilliant Sculpting Paul Robeson, London
Photographed about 1939
Alfredda Brilliant was a Polish-born sculptor who had lived and worked in Russia before escaping Stalin?s persecution of his opponents by moving to London in 1937. Along with her husband, the film-maker Herbert Marshall, she was active in a range of progressive artistic causes. These included writing the filmscript for `The Proud Valley? (1940) in which Paul Robeson starred. Shot on location in the Welsh coalfields, the film portrays the political struggle of a black miner who sacrifices his life for his co-workers in a mining accident. `The Proud Valley? offered an heroic vision of a black worker then quite unthinkable in Hollywood.
