Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000263 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 #:
000263
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 ingy straightforward Englishmen or the vibrant go and get 'em Americans," read the Bible. They shouldn't. If your life is full, if your road is straight, if your destiny is straightforward and you see the end, the goal of your life right in your own conscience, why you should be bothered with tales of murder and rape ( for that is what the Old Testament consists of mainly) or with idealistic theories of friendship and brotherhood and poetic imaginative stories about sparrows and farthings and candlesticks and lamps and lilies, as set forth in the so-called gospels. Why should you disturb yourself with the ancient internecine history of the Old Testament, why should you unbalance yourself with the mystical doctrine of the New if your life is straight and your conscience is straight and your business is flourishing and your children are well and your cook is adequate. Why, why should people be tortured, be devitalized, be discouraged, be troubled? Why? I don't for one moment want to perturb anybody or force anything down throats that are not starving. The New Testament and the Old Testament are for people who are hungry, literally, spiritually hungry. So in a sense these Russian films. Many people will not want to see them, and why should they? To many people the Bible, even though they may treat it reverently, is a boring old volume and one utterly out of the general trend of living. But on the other hand, to the specialist in warfare, in politics, in political economy, in literature, in poetry, the Bible is a never ending source of pure delight, of intellectual stimulus, of poetic charm. Those who must have the best in literature, in mystic doctrine must eventually turn to the teachings of the minor prophets and the Prophet. So those who in no 19