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 #:
000175
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 oblivion, relaxation— or to sleep ! It is not unreasonable to suppose that there may not even be a theatre in the near future (although the lure of the crowd ought to persist in bringing humans out of their homes), since broadcasting of talking-films by radio is not far ahead of us. But, however that may be, for the minority motion pictures will always be pantomime; and if the time arrives when we can no longer watch our pictures in silence — if we are to see the frightful day when a pantomime must also be an elocutionist — -I know a growing audience that will quietly leave the film theatre,^ never to return. But I am limiting the motion picture, denying it a logical development in its progress toward the complete absorption of all the other arts? But I am limiting nothing, denying nothing. If I have said elsewhere that the photoplay is a robber of the arts, I have not meant that it must devour them all, cast aside their empty husks, and remain itself alone, shining and supreme. The motion picture can take on the qualities of sculpture, painting, the stage, music, without conjuring itself into a mere versatile artistic parrot; it can strut the world stage well enough in borrowed — and transmuted — plumage and yet leave a few feathers to its elder sisters. Forgive the metaphors. Even with the addition of the human voice, the films can never hope entirely to supplant the stage. Lack of the voice has heretofore been regarded as the motion picture's only limitation and the one thing (aside from color, which the films already use with moderate success) whereby the stage asserts its right to life ; but presence of the voice in reality imposes a limitation on the screen. Pantomime remains real onlv as long as it is pantomime. Echoing from 29