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 #:
00035
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 applied is Jean Epstein. He insists upon the image, lingers over it, penetrates it. What does it matter that Finis Terrae is slow? What does it mean that it does not satisfy those who wanted the subject treated physically m^tesid of psychically? Epstein has shown how the physical material may be rendered psychical by persisting in the examination of the physical image. The pictorial mind here transcends itself. \ r . It is in keeping with the pictorial mind that the French have made so much of the term " photogenic," that Germaine Dulac indefatigably urges the fthn visuel as against the film anti-visueL It is right that Man Ray should have found his centre in Paris, and that the best short, nonnarrative films should come from France : The Octopus of Jean Painleve as well as that early nature study, The Germination of Plants, The Zone of Georges Lacombe, La P'tite Lily of Cavalcanti ... This leads to a second deduction, the source of the French film is in the traditional atelier of French art. It is true, in the main, that the film dependent upon collective labors has a hard row in France (but, from another point of view, does it have such a good time in America ?).+ This is not irremediable. My deduction is not, however, made from negative conditions but conditions which are organic and positive. All that I have said before leads to the deduction, t The collective difficulty in France is mainly the natural indifference of the French working man, and the financial closeness of the producer. As for the major collectivity, between the artists, I think, on the whole, a better esprit exists in France than in America. And as for the intrusion of the mercantilists into the enterprise of the author, what grosser instance than that of Hollywood? B 17