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 #:
000365
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:
November 07, 2023
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CLOSE UP 341 The Portuguese Government recognizing the advantages of the creation of a national industry of cinema, made a decree : Firstly — freeing for five years the Compania Portuguese de Filmes Sonores from all taxes and contributions ; Secondly — lowering the taxes on the cinemas when they show a film of Portuguese origin ; Thirdly — that foreign films must be shown in proportion to the national production. But this is not all ! The country and the fine climate of Portugal is attracting the foreigners. Some time ago a Belgian Caravan arrived in Portugal, commanded by Stephane Borg ; they wanted to produce a picture about our country, and they are now at work. At the same time it is said (but I cannot yet confirm it) that some producers technicians and artists, obliged to leave Germany on account of the present situation there intend to set up in Portugal as cinematograph centres of international production. As you see, Portugal is getting on in the film world, but ... as said Rene Clair : art et argent, intelligence creatrice et regies financieres sont ici aux prises. Alves Costa. THE HISTORICAL INCEPTION OF STAGE AND FILM By Pennethorne Hughes. That dead donkey, the absolute independence of true cinema and theatre, has been flogged now into a nasty enough pulp to avoid any fear of further theoretical identification of the mediums. But it may be profitable to suggest (before the ultimate professors of cinematography do so), various analogies of opportunity which do appear in the historical development of the two means of expression. For it is now possible, with some hope of intelligent sympathy, to show the sixteenth century as a period of cultural decadence and material expansion remotely comparable to our own, and so to suggest that in their audiences and immediate development the theatre and cinema had much in common, quite independently of course of that tried and tired subject, their technical relationship. A pedagogic catalogue of parallels would be insufferable, but, without pressing the analogy too far, or even stressing its implications, the outstanding likenesses may be mentioned. Here are a few of them. First, personnel. The secular theatre, at first, was regarded with the horror which was inherent in Christian policy (and for that matter pagan policy too, when properly enforced.) Tertullian thundered against actors, bishops refused to baptise them, and so on, until by the thirteenth century the Roman theatre had been almost entirely abandoned, and the amusements of the nobles became those of combat and marbles, with, after the Crusades, gaming, whilst the people had the consolation of fairs, dances, bear-baiting, bull-fighting, and those exhibitions of mystical or quasi-dramatic pageantry which only ultimately developed into the Elizabethan theatre. This is history.