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 #:
00022
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:
July 25, 2024
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CLOSE UP ded to film the story Boule de Suif by Maupassant. Because of these considerations we have shghtly re-worked some passages of the novel, in modernising it ever such a little. As a quite simple director, however much they may have assigned to me a distinct and independant place in the w^orld of Russian films, I will tell you also what are the opinions which prevail in m}^ personal conception of the cinema, a conception in which I sincerely believe and which I shall put in practice during the realisation of the new film of which we are speaking. I believe that the principal value of the film has been conferred on it by the diverse and complex character of human emotions. Passion and feeling alone, have right of entry into films and I am not content myself with registering the completely superficial manifestations of emotion but to seize them entirely and show them in everyday life as they really are. I want my camera to be like Roentgen, whose raj^s pierce through to the innermost of our being. I want to project on the screen the very foundation of man in order that the analysis of determinate sensations, of acts and thoughts, are translated into luminous images. The academic professor Bechserevv^ who died recently, taught me long ago the science of human reflexes. I devoted several j^ears to the study of determinism, of psychic states, of the theory of repressions, of Freud in particular, and of diverse manifestations of fear, anguish, sorrow and love. All that I learnt has actually been of great service to me in the preparation of my actors. 12