Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Page scan 000263 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000263
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP movement : and movement seems to make them much fuller and more interesting than futurist paintings. Emak Bakia, or the Berlin symphony film of Ruttman I call abstract films of the second degree : real objects add tinge of 'literary' interest, and, I think, of value, though it is less easy to control the units with the same smooth perfection, and certainly the purer type had a very pleasing austerity, which doesn't raise the question of 'meaning'. The next step from the apex is into the film poem, and, as the angle widens, the scope and diversity increase, and with the scope for extra value, scope too for impurities and vulgarisms. In this category is Manhatta (Film Arts Guild) a topographical film on an improved pattern, with 'New York' as subject. The method of this, applied emotionally, would result in a film poem. We have not yet reached the old favourite Warning Shadows, that is a film drama, and I can only quote, for this division, a meagre stock of examples. Mr. Castleton Knight's film based on Rachmaninov's Prelude in C sharp minor is a true film poem, though not a very beautiful one. Parts of the Student of Prague could almost have been shown separately (like the Hawk-dream from The Nibelungs) but I don't think that such passages can be called film poems, though they have a high poetic charge, for, after all, a poem must be an entity in itself. The film poem corresponds to the lyric, or, say, the landscape, and a good film poem is more valuable than a good abstract film because it contains a greater complexity in as great a harmony. Hardly any attempt has been made to *7