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 #:
00042
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 Close Up and suggested sensibly that I look at a few pictures and relieve my feelings by telling Close Up what I thought. I passed through the emotions of horror, fear lest the grandeur that was Greece might be H. D. no more, and personal shyness. Escaping from the small town to Washington a little later, I dutifully saw a fair sample of what Washington saw on the screen this autumn, and then settled down into the uncomfortable state of mind of one who has been asked to do something disagreeable and is putting it off as long as possible. This is it. I saw somebody or other in Max Power (i). Not being a movie fan, I have not memorized the names of stars. I rejoiced that the picture began with railroad trains and automobiles out of doors, continued in a manufactury of tractors largely out of doors, and ended in a progress of a tractor train through storm on such a road as I have not seen since the armistice to a cracking dam and threatened flood. I was not much moved by the great big beautiful strong young man extank-corps wrho perfected her father's tractor and won the heautiful daughter of the usual baroque rich man's house. Incidentally I observed that the explosion of the tractor in the main street was delicious farce material that distinctly did not belong in a drama the subject of which was the terrible power in man and machine fighting the terrible power in wrater. But the setting was right for the cinematograph, and that is rare, damnably, pitifully rare. (i) Richard Dix, Ed. 26