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 #:
000443
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP * * * For such a state of affairs it is not a solution that is needed but reparation. The only thing of course is an efficient system of protective copyright. How is this Ukely to come about and when ? Not until every director recognises his power and becomes dictator making his own conditions. A combination of directors working together would soon and without undue difficulty turn the tables. The public must have its films, but if the directors refused to supply them except on their own terms, not one here and another there, but working in definite co-operation, then their work would finally be treated with respect. There would be deadlock at first and fracas, and an interesting crisis in the cinema world. But take this from me. Tm dead sure the pubhc is right on the director's side. The public doesn't want films on the principle children are allowed certain books by their parents and not others, the pubhc is more mature than that. I have said before, the pubhc, the real, constant cinema pubhc knows a good film and would give anything to see good films. What it does not want is a wide range of middlemen making sure that it sees if possible only bad ones. Out of somewhere the incredible myth has arisen that the public is getting what it wants. "What the public wants" in the way of films has long been understood to be trivial compounds of tribulation, pathos, laughter (preferably through your tears) and a "happy ending". 9