Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00017
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 jurisdiction is noisy like a gong or braying ass in the vanquished towns. The defeated stand behind windows, whispering; the pleasant towns are littered with damaged culture. The half-built houses are deserted. Xo work will be done on them, and the debris lies on discarded buildingstuff. Xone of the old machines can be heard at work any more, and there is only watching and fear. The air is full of the dust of the new jerry-buildings. Adding a voice that takes away all that people put in for themselves. Expelling imagination. The personal concept banished. The gesture that to each meant something that each alone in some way of his own created and gave to himself, must cede in favor of that to which a voice can reduce it. The accidental charm beyond a director's intention, that was imagination caught in some mesh of recognition or memorv or suggestion or joy, must go before the incredible half-wit snortings that are supposed to justify the plaster trees and unspeakable potted foliage of the studio out-of-doors. We are back with backdrops and barnstorming. * * * So thinks the ram, for he thinks of the present, not (for the moment) of the future. The waiting, waiting. The weeping artists starved from their love and their work. These matter. The back stepping of the tinfoil gladiator may be a balancing necessity for forward leap. The leap may be long and clean But certainly longer than clean. And a long time will have to pass indeed before charlatans, vulgarians and opportunists are chased from the field. For the next few years talking films mean rehash. Rehash of Somerset Maugham, of Frederick Lonsdale, of ]\Iichael