Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000364 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 #:
000364
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 actuating producers, agents and exhibitors are proudly enumerated. In such terms might any match-seller interpret his relationship to the world. He, also, is a social worker, conscious of his role ; never for a moment forgetting that he toils for the future of humanity. I prefer, for their superior honesty, the methods of the Americans, who do at least frankly confess that they are out to make money. Our phrases, lavishly spread with a pomade of idealism, are for high days and holidays. On other occasions a more careless diction is usual. From Monday to Saturday, in the director's room, the studio, copying-rooms and box-offices, we are well aware that the film is an article of commerce taking toll of the ambitions of each individual concerned. The intricacies of single intelligences won't pay. Rationalised manufacture, team work, leading-strings, a good line, these are what we want : detective stories of the day before yesterday, yesterday's historical pageant, to-day's tear-soaked war-romance, possibly to-morrow's new racial embroilings. The days of a Congress are all Sundays. Congressional speech all pulpit eloquence. By this we can be moved as by good organ music. But on week-days cars are hooting, factory whistles shrieking, steam-hammers droning. The assembled delegates of the first International Congress of Cinema-owners, representing the owners' organisations of Belgium, Germany, England, Finland, France, India, Yugo-Slavia, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Tcheko-Slovakia, Turkey and Hungary, hereby resolve that no more films shall be exhibited that defame any nation or may be considered as calculated to wound national susceptibilities. The delegates 18