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 #:
000177
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Early Cinema, Global Cinema, and Switzerland
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 high hopes. Even aside from the crudities which appear to be inherent in all of the so-called talkies, there is no real sustained story — only a series of more or less related incidents. However, there is one redeeming feature — the rich resonance of the Xegro voices in speech and in song prove that in the field of the talkie " they cannot be surpassed. Of Hearts in Dixie, Robert C. Benchley, dramatic critic of the New Yorker, and former dramatic critic of Life magazine, writes in Opportunity — a journal of Negro Life — for April : " It may be that the talking-movies must be participated in wholly by Negroes, but, if so, then so be it. In the Negro the sound picture has found its ideal protagonist." Traditional racial attitudes in America have proven a tremendous obstacle in the way of those whose creative instincts lead them to see the beauty and pathos in Negro life. Motion picture producers will hesitate long before they attempt anything in the nature of a new evaluation of the Negro. America is conservative to the point of reaction when it comes to ideas — especially ideas on the so-calle race problem. Therefore, it is probable that the screen wil follow in the paths of least resistance, for on that path the box office lies. It would appear that the history of the Negro in America might provide a rich source of dramatic material for treatment on the screen. Surely, of all the racial groups which make up this roaring democracy, none have sustained such an unremitting and colorful conflict with the forces of their environment as the Negro. From the time the first slave 119