Start Over

Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 00099 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 #:
00099
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 of surprises and gags which reveal the rieh inventiveness of his brain, and I believe that it is the most important French film of the year. Eugen Deslaw has shown his experimental film, which he modestly calls La Nuit Electrique. It is a kind of documentaire on the lighted advertisements of large cities, Berlin and Paris. With great economy of means Deslaw attains a real forceful mobility. There is great progress to be observed from his previous film, and he has succeeded in giving to these apparently cold advertisements a sense of life. I met Joris Ivens (the technical director of the Film Liga of Holland) a few days ago, who spoke of the work he has already accomplished and also of his projects. He has finished Pont d^Acier, a cinema poem on a moving bridge near Rotterdam, and has just signed a contract with the Studio 28, where the film will be shown from January 15th. He is now cutting his film Duel; the first Dutch film from the original scenario of Last, of which the mise-en-scene was directed by H. Franken, with Ivens in charge of the photography and cutting. This film, which is almost a thousand metres long, will cost little, and from several documents Ivens showed me, I think will be very lovely. There are no professional actors, and the collaborators have contrived to make their people act as well as if they were professionals. I have used,*' he said to me, a new method of expression with regard to nature. I wanted to express nature subjectively, that is, as the person in the film should see it, according to his state of mind. I think I have secured the effect I wished." 69