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 #:
000214
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 dominantes in the first stages of life : it must gain power of concentration, of continuity of interest, in place of the appeal made by variety. As a child it is incapable of a true sense of proportion or understanding of slow development leading towards a wished for goal : but it is just these capacities we must seek to develop if the child is to become adult in the true sense of the word, instead of that product so prevalent in the modern world, the Peter Pan type, the man with the childmentahty. And now to return to those influences and reactions which are still more significant — concealed from ordinary observation. In the human being's development, one of the most important stages is that of beUef in magic, a stage characteristic of the infant, the very young child, the primitive and to some extent, though disguised, of the "Civilized" adult. It is the stage named by Ferenczi, the famous Hungarian psycho-analyst, "the period of unconditional omnipotence" a period wherein life and all its dearest needs and wishes are maintained from some mysterious external source, without human effort. It is clear that such a condition is an actuality in the earliest months of fife ; a little later this stage is sadly left behind and the child must learn through bitter necessity that achievement is reached only through effort ; yet there remains still, and throughout life, some of this "omnipotence" wish (manifested for instance, in such forms as the universal interest in gambling, in fortune-teUing, in prophesy, in "luck"). Now it is a matter vitally affecting harmonious development how far such an attitude becomes dominant, for 48