Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000242 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 #:
000242
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 the highbrows talk so loftily, have only the same old stories, and the screen needs new material, etc., etc. And you can get up and say Bunk to this, but it doesn't get you far, because if you start to dilate on the many excellencies; of the New Technique, of the virtual regeneration, or rather the revolution of the film, of its utterly new adaptation and use, most of your listeners will dislike you for being superior, or else breathe ardently I know, I know. The Way of All Flesh was like that." And where have you got to? Certainly no further forward than you were. To begin to prepare the ground then, if you are going to state that the Russian film is a thing apart, and a new splendour to the earth, you must give reasons. And you would be safe to say fairly early that not all of them are splendid or good or even bad, but that the important films, the super films are almost without exception, marvellous. Those who have seen only the early ones — The Marriage of the Bear^ The Postmaster, Poly Kuschka, with their strong adherence still to the theatre, are in no way equipped to judge of the developments wrought by such masters are Eisenstein, Pudowkin, Room, Preobrashenskaja, Stabavoj, and several others. The impasse has arrived when not to have seen the films of these masters means that one is actually left behind in this onrush, and one's conception of the cinema dated. And how many have or will have the chance to see them ? I don't mean hacked and changed and mutilated and misrepresented with false subtitles, but straight and in their original form? How can this resolve itself? How can Russia go on making films so far ahead of those made anywhere else, and any sort of balance remain? You cannot have one 6