Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000184 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 #:
000184
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 results for the new Stage, nor for the new Architecture of the Theatre in general. They remained stuck fast in mere decoration, and after a brief existence of a few years they perished in the artistic reaction of 1926 to 1927. While in the Theatre every single spectator is an atom of the mass of spectators and loses his individuality in order to be fused into complete unity with the actors, the Cinema which I have designed is the ideal house of the inactive spectator, of the passive spectator, of the individual spectator, the house of absolute Individuality. The most important quality of the auditorium is, on the one hand, its power of suggesting concentration of attention. Even more important is its power of destroying the sensation of confinement which may be involved in the focal concentration of the spectator upon the screen. I mean that the Reflex which the film creates in the psyche of the spectator must make it possible for him to lose himself in imaginary, endless space, to feel himself alone in universal space, even though the projection surface, the screen, implies the opposite : All for one point, the SCREEN. The architectural form of the ideal Cinema, contrary to the Theatre, must vary according to the size of the audience. Every capacity implies its corresponding elementary architectural form. A cinema for 300 spectators will have its special form (involving, of course, the size of the building ground), which will be essentially different from the form of a cinema for 1,000. The latter will differ from one designed for 2,000, this in turn from those designed for a capacity of 4,000, 6,000 and 10,000. Beyond 10,000 spectators, the architectural form will remain the same. 38