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 #:
000163
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP A LETTER FROM WALTER WHITE (Secretary of the National Association for the i\dvancement of Colored People, author of The Fire in the Flint and Flight, both novels of negro life, as well as much research work in negro social problems.) As a result of the successful use of Negro themes in the American theatre and the acclaim which has come to Negro artists in the theatre, on the concert platform and through ^ the work of Negro novelists and poets, there is now beginning to be seen a considerable activity in the world of the cinema with Negro life as the material used. Four of the biggest cinema producing companies in the United States are at present at work on Negro pictures. One of them, '^Hearts in Dixie' \ produced by William Fox is to have its world premiere to-night. From what I have heard of all of these pictures now being made none of them reaches a very high level either of interpretation of Negro life or honest presentation of genuine ^ Negro material. All four of them are of the minstrel show, '*Befo' de war", type. That, however, does not seem to^ me important. With the vast amount of race prejudice in America and particularly because the producers of moving pictures must depend upon a nation-wide distribution which includes the South, it is almost imposible to start off with l^^ 105