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 #:
000245
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP fined within national limits. Here are noble ideas applicable to every country equally, and to everybody. Do not let me be accused of political bias. Politics are not my world. I would like to state that it has always seemed to me that the best party politics you could devise would mean always that some people were on top and some oppressed. Politics are hardly the solution to the world's problems. Sociology, yes. And that is why the Russian films touch me so deeply, and command my unquestioning homage. They are not — as the International Press Conspiracy would have us believe — rabid incitement to rise up and massacre, but on the other hand, the most eloquent pleading for beauty and understanding that man has made. It would not take an intellectual to see this. You would see it. I see it. Any king would see it. What are people then afraid of? It can only be that something would be shown up. We would be made to see how little beauty and understanding have been allowed in our lives. Too many people still prefer blind bias. They have founded their values upon it, and been forced to make their protection out of it. Finally we trace back the prejudice and fear not to any reason connected with social overthrow or revolution but to the danger of losing those valuations which have given spiritual nurture and protection. To admit too much understanding, or too much compassion might mean that somebody else would get ahead, somebody else crush one out of existence. For one would not then have the ruthlessness or justification of so-called virtue by which one now^ must crush out others to survive. It is, in short, a deeply-rooted instinctual process of self-preservation. 9