Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000773 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 #:
000773
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 Etoile de mer, poeme surrealiste de ]\Ian Ray, sur un argument d'A. Artaud, presente ceci de particulier qu'il est ecrit en images deformees. Pas plus complique que cela ; un film tourne au travers d'une surface legerement opaque et ondulee peut etre baptise : poeme surrealiste, quand bien meme les phenomenes qui s'y observent relevent plus de la dioptrique que des principes de I'esthetique visuelle. Deux hommes, une femme, une etoile de mer, constituent les objets perceptibles a notre oeil, avec une banane, un journal et une bouteille. La bouteille, le journal, la banane et I'etoile de mer forment un assemblage assez heteroclite pour offrir une vision originale, aussi peut-on la distinguer nettement. Quant au surplus, c|ui ne compte rien d'anormal dans le groupement, la refraction le " versifiera " a son gre, aplatissant les fronts, ecartelant les oreilles ou brisant net un nez trop academique. Force m'est d'avouer qu'a part une ou deux coincidences harmonieuses du dessin, etoile de mer ne signifie pas plus visuellement parlant Cju'au point de vue " legende Ici, un sous-titre, oublie par megarde, annonce gravement : des dents de femme qui etaient des perles " et qui ne sont plus que des jambes. La le vocable " eternebre " fait tomber en extase simples et erudits. Ruttmann, lui, a compose des opuscules . . . qui ne sont pas, comme vous pourriez le croire, des ouvrages d'art ou de science, mais de petits rouleaux de films sur lesquels I'auteur s'est plu a inscrire des figures geometriques . . . Decoupages, surimpressions, defiles de lignes paralleles qui fuyent sur I'ecran, comme des rails sous les yeux d'un observateur place sur un train. Succession frenetique de cubes engendrant d'autres cubes, angles sombres qui, des 89