Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000186 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 #:
000186
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 how its mediums (means) are utilized and not on what is employed ; and in the film of the future all depends on how the black-and-white-color and sound can be fused into an optophonetic union. The attempts at speaking-films have failed completely in the cinema. Speaking is too natural, too concretely a part of an individuality, to be changed from nature to abstract art. But singing, on the contrary, like instrumental music, will be employed as accompaniment to optical drama, for singing, the abstract form of speech, can at once be combined with the optical drama in the realm of art. The reproduction of speech, however, falls into the realm of the radiophone and of television — a transfer into space of the material of facts (news reels). The acoustics and the general form of the cinema depend essentially on the establishment of these facts, as do the position of the orchestra, of the organ, and all related details. There is no doubt whatever that the film is not a final goal, but a transition to a new art which I call OPTOPHOXETICvS. The house of Optophonetics, as the ideal cinema, is the OPTOPHON. The problems which determined my plans and which have received an entirely original solution bv me were : 1. The elementary difference between Theatre and Cinemaarchitecture. 2. The possibilities of utilizing film theatres when there is nothing on the screen. 3. The variety of architectural forms according to the capacity of the house. 4. The problem of handling the audience in the cinema (the traffic problem in the cinema). 5. Light-intermissions (continuous and discontinuous method of presentation). 6. The 40