Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000146 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000146
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 the Negro as movie material — Negro film corporations, Negro and white film corporations, and white corporations, all for the production of Negro pictures. They have the same motives, namely, to present Negro films about and for Negroes, showing them not as fools and servants, but as human beings with the same emotions, desires and weaknesses as other people's ; and to share in the profits of this great industry. Of this group, perhaps the three best known companies are The ]^licheaux Pictures Companv of New York City, an all-coloured concern whose latest releases are The Wages of Sin and The Broken Violin; The Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia, a white concern, which produced three favorites — A Prince of His People, Ten Nights in a Barroom, starring Charles Gilpin, and Children of Fate ; and the Liberty Photoplays, Inc., of Boston, a mixed company, no picture of which I have seen. There is rumor of the formation in New York City of The Tono-Film, an allNegro corporation, for exclusive Negro talking pictures and that its officers and directors will include Paul Robeson, Noble Sissle, ]\Iaceo Pinkard, Earl and ^Maurice Dancer, J. C. Johnson, F. E. Miller and \Yill \^odery, all of whom are known in America and abroad. So far, the pictures released by this group have been second rate in subject matter, direction and photography, but they do keep before the public the great possibilities of the Negro in movies. In conclusion, it must be conceded by the most skeptical that the Negro has at last become an integral part of the Motion Picture Industrv. And his benefits will be more than monetary. Because of the Negro movie, many a prejudiced