Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000683 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 #:
000683
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 adjust ; all the flux and fury of a people smashing awav old fetters. Philosophies and agony, moralisings, inspiration and frenzy., culminating in the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the victory of the Soviet Workers and Military Revolutionary Committee. " Winter was coming on — the terrible Russian winter. I heard business men speak of it so : ' Winter was always Russia's best friend. Perhaps now it will rid us of Revolution.' On the freezing front miserable armies continued to starve and die without enthusiasm. The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the life of the people, causing defeat on the Front." . . . I have personally met officers on the Northern Front Avho frankly preferred military disaster to co-operation with the Soldiers' Committees. . . I know^ of coal mines near Kharkov which were fired and flooded by their owners, of textile factories at Moscow whose engineers put the machinery out of order when they left, of railroad officials caught by the workers in the act of crippling locomotives. . ." This was the prelude to the big November Revolution following the June uprisings. Life still went on as before, cinemas, theatres, shops, all were open. " Young ladies from the provinces came up to the capital to learn French and cultivate their voices. . . The daughter of a friend of mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had called her ' Comrade !' " " Think of the poorly-clad people standing on the ironwhite streets of Petrograd whole days in the Russian winter ! 91