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 #:
000549
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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 EDITOR'S COMMENT I was never more astonished in my life than when I heard that Herr Metzner's very lovely film had been censored for any reason whatsoever. When his letter arrived and I learned it had been censored on the grounds of brutality and the likelihood of inducing crime, I could only feel that it was not safe to breathe lest it should be some cardinal sin. I emphatically join my protest to that of Herr Metzner. I say again that Uberfall is a beautiful, harmless film that could debauch no one, nor brutalise nor shock. Its artistic value would, in any event, raise it above petty consideration of its effect upon moral pathologicals. For the potential criminal it would be too intellectual and would mean nothing. There is nothing more likely to rouse one's impatience than the stupidity of such a clause, which science and psychology have endlessly proved to be false through and through. If the intricate surgery performed in detail in Storm Over Asia is less brutal or more artistic " than the footpad's blow (half seen) it would take a long time to make me see how or why. I hope most sincerely that this, one of the most valuable of the modern trends in cinema, will be shown as widely as possible throughout the world, and show up once and for all the futile and illiterate regression of thought and action that constitutes censorship in every country where it is applied. Kenneth Macpherson. B 17