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 #:
000268
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 In succouring C I am not being charitable (that is the joke of it), I am really being selfish. For if one suffers, eventually the other must, and if one nation to-day befouls its own integrity and strikes blindly at a lesser nation, the whole world, willy (as they say) nilly must be sooner or later dragged into the fray. Men must fight, it is true just as women must have children. But don't let's fight if we must fight, blindly, let us know what it is all about, nations must understand each other, then if C is fighting D, there is much more fun to be got out of it altogether. We must know, know, KNOW. One of the most distinguished women of the political nonmilitant suffragette period said to me (in 1914) I have studied the problem from every angle, but I can dare not question our cause for going to war. If I questioned it for one moment, I should go mad.'' I did not say to her then, " well, go mad." I would now. I would say, If you haven't the courage and decency to face the thing straight now and for all time you don't deserve your sanity, and I hope you lose it." None of us in the light of later events dare slurr over our mentality for the sake of any personal fear of intellectual or physical consequences. I do not for one moment doubt the justice of England's heroic move in '14. But I will say then as now there was even among the most enlightened a tendency to scrap blindly brain for sentiment. Well . . . what is this anti-Russian feeling but a sentiment? What do you know of the revolution? What do you know of the Russians ? Have you studied the Problem ? Do you know how the workers " suffered? I do not mean that I in any way question the political justice, the rigid watchfulness of certain of the authorities here in England. 24