Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000347 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 #:
000347
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 And it is these people, going in by chance to some such film, say, as The Peasant Women of Riazani, who emerge the greatest converts to the necessity of Film Art. They have been entertained. Their minds, bodies, souls, spirits, have responded, have been lifted on wings, re-fired, inspired. Nothing has ever done that thing to them before, and having experienced it once, they must have it again. Respite, instead of being lethargy, becomes renewal of faith. They go, not back to drudgery, back to problems gnawn to bits and worries worn shapeless, but with inspiration, strength and gratitude. They have literally received life. Their minds have been lifted beyond what now they will be apt to call petty care. The ordinary cinema sends them home with no message and no construction. Life goes on from where it left off. They have been dulled, but no effect lingers. They go from the great films with triumph and vision. They have been entertained. Entertainment becomes life. People may not want to think, people won't think, but they will be entertained. And the way to do it is to go the same way about it as you would if you were determined to make them think. They won't think, but they cannot help themselves. Thought and entertainment are one. Kenneth ]\Iacpherson. 9