Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 00089 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00089
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP in the gallery, and distributed another ten men in the boxes so that there was in the auditorium the actual sensation of being surrounded by sound. In fact, I may claim that Berlin was almost the first of the sound pictures." Tired by his eloquence, Mr. Freund finished : " You do see that colour and sound do not mean stage, don't you ? And anyway, you must admit that it will be interesting." I made Mr. Freund assure me that he would be as satisfied â– with his lighting effects in colour. I even brought up Air. Elliot's argument that the eye is trapped by colour, and does not travel as it does from black to white. He retorted that so often you do not want the eye to travel, and you have to put the background out of focus to ensure the eye being held. Then Mr. Freund asked me a question. What films did I like best? I determined to be quite honest and told him that Russian films seemed to me to be the most significant. Air. Freund beamed. I like the" Russian films best also. They convey atmosphere in one shot, and the German film takes hundreds of feet of film to do it. Russian films are a question of angles and cutting; the camera work is ' topical ', but I like it. I am longing for the day when I can work ' on the spot like a journalist who scribbles on his shirt cuff; for the day when there will be no studio and no lights." What an amazing statement from Carl Freund, one of the greatest experts in the world I I wanted him to elaborate, so I asked : " Don't you feel that studio shots, which you have lit yourself, are more your own thaa exteriors ?" That is what they tell me in Germany. When I say I want no: studio, . and na. lights, they think I am mad. . . But, 59