Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000359
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:
November 07, 2023
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CLOSE UP 335 An enlargement from the negative of Eisevstein's " Que Viva Mexico." Un negatif agrandi de " Que Viva Mexico " d'Eisenstein. It would be pleasant if one could think of Pabst as willing to use his *' realife " camera just for the moment without thought of anything but photography. Most of Hollywood has forgotten that a camera photographs, that it sees, or perceives ; they think of it merely as a recording film-gramophone. The result has been that we are overfed with New York stage gabble and southern California backgrounds. Pabst — and of course not alone Pabst — must again discover for us the magic that lies in the camera box. Geometry and the spectrum, to say nothing of geography and the human corpus, still are picturable. And, if the slander upon Hollywood cameraman is not too unbearable, in natural light and shade. We are having a filter epidemic over here. We must look to Pabst and whoever else comes for this love of the camera. It is our dead lost love. Cutting — yes. It is a great deal. But it is not everything. Well, at least Pabst is here, and we shall see.