Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Nov 1927
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00094
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP which wont happen through trade channels. It will probably start with a derided (it is bound to be derided) flush of films violently reactionary ; abstractions, trick-photographs, headlong plunges into mistranslations of other arts, impressions of thought-processes, bombs and explosions of refutation, utterly scrapping commercial formulas, awful misapplications of cubism, and surrealism, and impressionism. And everybody will blow small trumpets, then there really will be a superior attitude. Hideous words will be invented, and gushings of pseudo-pseudo modernists, and much clacking and third rate talk. And the Press will thunder, and musical comedy will do its best to be caustic, and good citizens will say, these awful people (And there just will be some aw^ful people). And we will hear of "x\ New Drawing-Room Craze" and "A New Pastime For The Idle Rich" and five or six j^ears will have heard the derision abating. Then the stage of taking it for granted. Then the stage of publicity, of These Daring Young Moderns. Then a slow welding, a peeping across from the Commercial ambush to the Rebel (that word will be used) ambush. Because back of the pseudo-pseudos and the third rate talk, not heard so much or seen so much, the real plant will grow and flower. The real plant will have taken nourishment from an improving commercial standard, and spread its roots there. And finally there will be co-ordination. A treaty perhaps, or a more subtle agreement — a growing together. And by that time the power of the film v/ill be immense beyond prediction. In the meantime we are working toward this end,— the 14