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 #:
00070
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 we do not even know w^iether we have a film-style, and the few works that to-day are described as classics will probably in the course of a few years, in face of what ought to come and what must come, be cast aside and forgotten. If, even now, we look back a little, we can clearly see that work which a few years ago was regarded as setting a standard is to-day considered mistaken and almost useless. In so saying I do not, of course, mean to suggest that such work has actually been useless. On the contrary, it has powerfully supported the development of film art. But we ought not to make the mistake of criticising freshly created work in relation to what is past. By each small technical innovation the art of cinematography is so fundamentally influenced that at once new possibilities arise, new paths are opened up of which hitherto we had not dreamed. We must also bear in mind that the film, since it owes its strength to the multiplicity of its possibilities, becomes tedious and uninteresting the moment it exhibits a tendency to uniformity. It is unfortunate that the majority of people, insufficiently equipped to face the unfamiliar, and preferring, therefore, what they know by heart, are unable to meet fresh developments with clear eyes and minds. Why should it be demanded of a director who has once produced a film of a certain kind that he should go on reproducing his success for a life-time? Do not suggest that we make no such demand, for we do make it, without being clearly aware of the fact, and in a way that does not betray itself at the first glance. The result is a kind of serialisation w^hich, no matter how perfect it may be, is found presently to be wearying us by reason of its uniformity. The film should be as various as life. 48