Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000173 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000173
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 young child, dreams are inestimable treasure. To it, as to God, all things are possible. Its animism is normal and beneficent and at least as true,'' regarded as interpretation, as the varying descriptions of the nature of existence that later take its place. It may be well in the case of elder children to anticipate the strange embarrassment awaiting them in the discovery of themselves as more or less central. But the young child's rose should be allowed to keep its heart. If you strike, it is not at the imagined heart of the rose, but at that of the child, who gave the rose its heart. Let it keep the magic garden, the dreams and fantasies and fairytales, to which eternally it belongs, together with the city of familiar life within which soon enough it must learn its place. Most children, like most adults, object to being preached at. Yet direct moral teaching has its place, and what a priceless chance here has the film as against the moralising author, who must make his choice between fable, sly parable and sermon. Author, as preacher, is in a dangerous situation unless he be part artist and part saint. But the picture is impersonal. The children sit before it as ladies and gentlemen of the jury, ^sop and La Fontaine, remaining because they are works of art, offer admirable material. So does Strewelpeter, which contains the makings of enchanting grotesque moral films. Dorothy M. Richardson. 27