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 #:
000382
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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358 CLOSE UP Here I will relate some dialogues that seem to be silly and absurd towards us. (Pinkerton becomes attached to Cho-Cho San). Barton : {Laughs) . Acquaint this guy with the facts of life, will you ? Goro : To marry, that very usual arrangement. Pinkerton : Well, not with me, it isn't. Barton : No, no, you don't catch on. Marriage doesn't mean the same thing to those people that it does to us. Why — {laughs) — well, all you have to do out here is to sign a marriage contract with the girl's parents and that's that. Pinkerton : Yeah, what about when we up anchor ? Barton : Well, you just leave, that's all, and when you do, the girl is considered divorced. Pinkerton : Well, that's pretty tough on the girl, isn't it ? Barton : {Laughs) — No, no, not at all. A marriage broker, like Goro here, gets her a new husband before the old one is half way down the front steps. To summarize what I have described above, Japanese films, both dramatic and cultural, exported and exhibited abroad, do not propagate Japan as she is to-day, but cater for the prejudices with which all the foreign nations are possessed, by exposing her relic of feudal days that seems even to us, Japanese, to be odd and nonsensical. Not only so, but also foreign-made-films treating Japan, needless to say, convey a false Japan. These aspects have brought about a tendency favourable for the movement of national control over the films to be exported, regardless of whether their producers are Japanese or not, and also of negative or positive. It is reported by the recent newspaper that the Japanese Department of Home Affairs has commenced to investigate the present circumstances of film control in the principal countries of the world in order to establish in Japan a national policy of the same effect in co-operation with the other Departments. The bill which has been published to be discussed by them, contains, among others, the following items. 1 . Films to be exported shall be controlled by similar methods to such as are now adopted in Italy ( L.U.C.E. or L'Unione Cinematographica Educativa) and in Germany (Lampe Institut, and Ministerium fur Volks-aufklarung und Propaganda). 2. An semi-official cinema company like the above L.U.C.E. in Italy shall be established to produce not only the dramatic films, but also sociological, educational and propaganda pictures. 3. Films produced under control shall express the true Japanese spirit. Thus, having been forced to be interested in " Japan as seen in films," we have recently had two or three documental films of importance. One is Greater Tokyo, a Meschrabpom production directed by Wladimir Schneiderow, who is in Japan known as a director of Pamir. In the autumn of 1932, Schneiderow and his comrades arrived in Japan on their way home from an expedition to the Arctic Ocean. During their stay in Japan, they made a film document on