Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00041
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 28, 2022
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CLOSE UP You follow me, I hope. Aside from the impossible plot and hideously sentimentalized behavior, unmotivated by any recognizable emotions known to man or woman, the trouble with this picture was a plethora of interior stage sets, photographed as if from the orchestra, and interminable stage business that was not action. It is one of my prejudices that moving pictures should move, that movement is their special material. It is another that interiors in the movies should never look as if they had been taken from the orchestra, and should preferably be the sort of interiors that one could not imagine set on the stage. It is another that exterior locations impossible to the stage are the best settings for the screen. En fin, I see possibilities for the moving drama of the screen, but I am disgusted not to see them on the screen. Opposed to me in opinion are some ninety-two millions of persons in this country who get what they want on the screen. I say ninety two millions because the population of the States used to be the same as the distance to the sun when I went to school so I prefer to disregard recent immigrants and keep the nation that convenient size. It is possible that I am an antisocial being who should want what the screen gives to the satisfaction of my compatriots. But it is a principle of democracy, in which I do not believe, that the minority has a right to express a dissident opinion. I therefore dissent. But I also dislike reformers, and have hitherto confined my detestation of the movies to private grumblings, wailings and sardonic laughter in camera. Then H. D. wrote me about 25