Close-Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close-Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00017
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:
June 20, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP from facts and glorifying the bizarre, the stunted, the absurd — ^that, in short, it would have the precious sterility of every clique or group taking an ''ism" for its torch. It did not take long to prove that Close Up found "isms" as old-fashioned, dull and pompous as any progressive body must do ; that far from being caught in the just post-war flood of conventional freakishness, whose final aim was still destruction, it was suggesting that they were as responsible for the contempt of the trade toward so called '"artistic" films as were custard pie and whitewash slinging farces for the superstition that films were for the guttersnipe. In a v/ord, Close Up was determined to be quite liberal, and to be a sort of battleground. It scorned dogmatism and the tiresome proselytising of the ''fashions-in-ideas" groups, •'This season the waist-line of thought will be slightly raised, and skirts a soupcon shorter" was the kind of thing at which it might have levitated any amount of justifiable wrath. Xot that it would have been necessary, since the proof of such and all puddings is in the eating, if one may make bold enough to be so verbally dashing, yet here we were being accused of just that very thing we most certainly had no illusions about. This stopped pretty soon, since it became evident that we were level headed and broad minded. Then people began to be friendly. Then they sent in ideas, and suggestions, which, whenever possible, we acted upon. It was and is desired to make Close Up a really useful organ to all who believe in the film, w^hether the}^ are spectators only, or v/or 7