Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000157 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 #:
000157
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 If you look at the films in which Negroes have figured, 3^ou will find a few travel pictures, Zeliv, Voyage au Congo, The Black Journey, Samba, and one or two German ones, and the Voyage au Liberia, which I just missed at the Vieux Colombier. None of these are as good as they might be, qua films. For the rest, your list will be limited to pictures, some stills of which appear in this issue, in which Negroes play subsidiary parts. A black band playing in the background, or a waiter who may or may not be put in for " atnlosphere " or comic relief. There are some talkies. There are no really serious Negro films. Samba and Zeliv are exceptions. These were not only filmed in native country, but they enact native stories. Samba, I have not seen ; but Zeliv is by no means good, though it cannot help being interesting. As to the jazz side, Josephine Baker acted in a French film, and was surprisingly good. But Josephine Baker is more an invention of Paris than an interpreter of jazz, and this film was one of those affairs in which the French run riot with le decor moderne, and neglected the make-up of the Baker so much that she was hardly recognisable from one scene to the next. So that may be called a typically French film, and not Negro. Then there was another French picture with Catherine Hessling and Johnny Hudgins .... But there are no really serious Negro films. And there ought to beThere ought to be because there are Negro novels, and plays and poems. There ought to be because the Negro is marvellously photogenic, and the cinema is equally an affair •of blacks and whites. There ought to be because here is a 99