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 #:
000555
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP popularity of Paris, and as Paris is the place which has the reputation of using short films, it is as well that the earnest amateur should have a few rules or, if you like, recipes, since this is the one town which, from the fact of its existence downwards, he will find inexplicable. 1. He is, of course, though an amateur, not an artist. No. He is bon ouvrier. All he wants is to do his job. Of course, it is a new kind of job, and he is a new kind of workman, but still he's no artist. 2. Which being so, the question of a market is the first point. There are three kinds of films being shown in Paris this spring by the leading houses, and they are American, French and small abstracts, essais, symphonies, whatever you like to call them. It is important that you should realise that the American films are not to be found on the boulevards for the pleasure of tourists, but at the salles specialistes. Otherwise you will go quite wrong, and be not at all a bo7i ouvrier. On the boulevards you will find such things as La Rue Sans Joie and at the (vulgar, large but, what a relief, efficient) Paramount, Les Nouveaux Messieurs, But the real triumphs of the modern cinema are at the Ursulines Lonesome, the Vieux Colombier The Crowd, the Studio 28 The Last Warning. It will not occur to you to make an American film, and you cannot afford to buy up the whole of the modern furnishing floor at the Printemps, so a French film is out of question. Though wonders can, I am told, be done with radiator paint and a few yards of American cloth. Still, it is safer to concentrate on our old friend, the abstract. 23