Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000135
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 Vol. V No. 2 August 1929 AS IS BY THE EDITOR Effort at universal cinema has well shown that the only approach to it is strictly racial cinema. We have seen that the onlv way to understand peoples is in their essence, not — as has been tried and tried again — their compounding. Seeing that internationalism is the aim, clearh' the first necessity is nations. A brotherhood between nation and nation is founded not on one nation taking over the characteristics formed from the other's peculiar growth and development, but upon a higher understanding and respect. This in cinema above all else has been well proved. If instead of nations we have peoples imitating the diluted moral esperanto of other peoples, in the end there is neither understanding nor justifixcation for the continuance of irrelevance. When Ralph Forbes and Lilian Gish are cast as Austrians and directed in an Austrian scenario by an American director in Hollywood, we have neither America nor have we Austria. 85