Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000466 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 #:
000466
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 usually carried out with mechanical ease — are in the highest degree indicative of the inner experiences of the subject, of his desires and emotions, and exactly of those desires and emotions of which he himself is unaware. Accepting the inherent conditions of the technique of cinematography, all discriminating producers have used details of this kind as indispensable means of expression : most of them, certainly, without having the smallest theoretical knowledge of their actual significance. The agreement existing between the artists and poets of all periods and the principles of psycho-analysis has long been known to us, and it is not at all surprising that the film, after its own fashion, should take over and carry on the great tradition. 1. Panzerkreuzer Potemkin. A friend who had just seen Eisenstein's film for the third or fourth time, explained to me that at one point in the representation he had been very strongly moved without being able to discover what it was that had moved him. On each occasion this experience came to him at the moment when, by the captain's command, the sail-cloth is being carried on board. In the midst of this operation the head of the fugleman of the guard called up for the shooting emerges clearly for a moment, turned to watch. This watching head seems to have no particular expression, and any expression it might bear would, owing to the fractional time during which it appears in the picture, be lost upon the spectator. As my friend is a particularly intelligent and experienced film-professional, I felt urged to discover the solution of the 10