Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00069
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP PREJUDICES That the prejudices against which we have to fight are legion is scarcely a matter for complaint. For those who approach the art of the film in a state of prejudice (and do immeasurable damage amongst the reading public that is looking for a leader amidst the maze of conflicting opinions) are, unfortunately, not aware of their condition. One of the most redoubtable of the prejudices recently beginning to put forth blossoms is that which favours the drawing of parallels. All of us, it w^ould seem, are more or less instinctively inclined to seek a standpoint from which it is possible critically to survey a work of art : a method of judgment justified perhaps in regard to those branches of art that can look back upon hundreds and thousands of years of development, but, in relation to the films, entirely out of place. As an art-form the film can scarcely be said to have a past. Or, if one holds that such a past exists, it becomes necessary to realise that in the end it is relatively unimportant and meaningless. For everything that has been prepared to date is preparative work, temporary work, or, if you prefer, work that on technical grounds is destined to be relatively shortlived. (Neither must it be forgotten that at the end of about thirty years almost nothing remains of a negative.) So far 47