Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Nov 1927
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000102
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 of is famed for his word. He has a compHcated system of whistles by which he manoeuvres his supers. I once asked him, "Don't you get muddled with this intricate code of yours ?" "Not a bit old boy", was the answer, "you see I know that something has to happen each time I blow the whistle, and the boys know that something has to happen. Neither of us knows quite what is to happen, and that gives an effect of spontaneit}^ don't you know." Much in the same strain was the statement of an art director who told me that he made his models in the hope that they would come out all right. A leap in the dark. If they didn't. . . he shrugged his shoulders. There is one word that sums up British production. Haphazard ! "But this is all very well," you say, "but what of the fresh blood, what of the youth of the industry ?" To begin with the people now in pictures over here try to keep it a close circle. Each is trying to get his relations in, and oh what a web of petty jealousies ! In this fight money and influence are the determining factors, brains and education dead weights against you. To be branded a high brow is fatal. I was talking to a youth who had just secured, through influence, a much sort after job on the floor. "Are you keen on this work" ? I enquired. "Oh ! no," he said, "you see my father tried to get me into a bank for two years but as I couldn't matriculate I drifted 22