Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000274 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000274
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global 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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP ject lacked assertion, fullness and culmination. The analogy demanded the speculative mind, such as Epstein exercises upon phenomena, but so far as I was able to detect, this speculative metaphysical mind is not yet a portion of the Dutch film attitude, nor am I sure that the Dutch mind enjovs such' effete practices as Epstein employs. Finis Terrae, I was told in Amsterdam, is a wretched film, and all that is good in it is here and there a physical device. Yet Finis Terrae should have meant something to the Dutch practicians as a study in the utilization of natural tempers and in the exploitation of native types. They might even avoid Epstein's speculative treatment to see his structural employment of bodily parts. I think it would be well for the Dutch cinematists to remain concerned with the physical evidences of folk. They have at hand a rich source in their graphic art. They should go, not necessarily to their greatest artists (though Rembrandt can teach every cinematist much about tones) but to those of their artist, or Flemish or German artists, who have remained most folkish : an Abel Grimmer, for instance. Or for grander employments of folk activities to the paintings of the Brueghels and to Bosch — these are full of the kinetic. The galleries in Antwerp, Brussels and Amsterdam are replete with sources. I refer this examination to the cinematists of Belgium too. In Antw^erp, the Flemish Cinema Club has produced a film Leentje van de Zee (Peggy of the Sea), which I went to view thinking here might be the rudiments of a folk-film, if not a realized folk-film. The Dutch film Breakers possessed a dignity and seriousness of effort. But this film of amateurs with its ancient story of childhood love, the drunkard foe, the false accusation of 182