Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000670 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 #:
000670
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 when it was given over exclusively to vulgarity akin to that of the penny novelette, Stiller was forming his new conception of a great art, developing its potentialities, seeing far into the future. He was a great artist, working with profound care and intensity. His intensity may have been in part responsible for his early demise. Europe and America will mourn him, and the cinema will miss him, for the real leaders of screen progress are few and far between and can ill-afford to be lost. Those who have admired his works, from faithful followers to the general public, should now be given a revival of his films. Recently we had Gosta Berling in London. But surely it would be of real help as well as of interest to all students to see now a complete revival of his works. It would be a fascinating record of development and change. It would be a tribute to Stiller, and a monument to his greatness. Perhaps it will be done? * * # Japanese Director Tours European Studios. J. Singe Sudzuky, director of the Bantsuma-Tachibana Universal Motion Picture Studio of Japan, three stills from whose films are reproduced in our illustrated supplement of this issue, having directed ceaselessly for six years, is only now taking his first vacation. Having, in the six years, made as many as thirty films, this vacation is very much in the nature of a busman's holiday as he is at present studying European production methods in Germany and plans to visit France and England, and afterwards Hollywood. 78