Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000161 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 #:
000161
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 like this?" We have gone to the Maoris, but I do not think South Africa or the West Indies have been realised for the life they contain. Not a question of flying around with Cobham, and landing and then showing what a funn/ way native women do their hair. But send out a well-equipped expedition, with men who know how to film and men who have studied the races they are visiting. Then there would be documents of interest to everybody. Karl Freund is in Albania; maybe Albanians are interesting . . . The best film is the perfect documentary, in w^iich the themes and drama of the country under review is brought out and developed with as much care and sensitiveness as any studio work-of-art. These might be made by white men; I cannot see the best work in studios coming from w^hite directors working with a coloured cast. I cannot see how they can understand them. If only in time, Negro directors and Negro cameramen could be encouraged into existence . . . . But there is a slight start, Fetchit has come into his own, and if it can be guided, and if we keep our heads in the direction of what we expect, and don't lower them to what we are given, we shall be given something in time worth while. It is all a question of drama and conflict on the screen, and the screen is hard up for it, whereas the Negro comes into drama and conflict at every turn, it being the heritage the white man never thought he was giving him. And when with this you get responsiveness and grace and rhythm, you see quite suddenly that if the screen doesn't take care, the things it most wants will be put into other mediums more open to Negroes, where their presence will cause people to 103