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 #:
000262
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 RUSSIAN FILMS The Editor of Close Up has asked me to write about Russian Films. I say, I want to write about Russian Films, and then I say but why should I ? One does not sit down and write about the Book of Job or about Ruth in the corn, or about the harlot Rahab. The new great outstanding Russian films are in spirit Biblical films, they do not need to be written about. They are, and they stand, and will stand as long as the sheer material medium on which they are created will endure. No . . . they will endure longer than that. The drive behind the Russian film at the moment is a religious drive. The ideas that have already been hammered in are as authentic and as great (if I may be forgiven an apparent exaggeration) as those carved in lightning on the rock of Sinai. For the Russian Film at the moment deals with hunger, with starvation, with murder, with oppression, with adultery, with incest, with infanticide, with childbirth, with the very throes of childbirth itself. Many of these films will be released in Germany. Certain others will be shown only to select audiences, specialists in political economy, psychology or psychiatry. Well ... to be practical. Why should English people see these films, why should Americans? Let us be practical by all means. Why should the average every day hard work 18