Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000186 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 #:
000186
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP fabric of humanity, the iiumanity which after all is essential to, is part of and go with them, but nevertheless is only too often left out. If the film has been of the kind through which a thread of drama runs it is true that absolute naturalism suffers slightly as a consequence, but as in "Chang'' and particularly in '^Nionga" the dramatic moulding was never obtrusive enough to parody the natives' psychology and rob us of their naivete and simple charm which has always drawn us to these films as a relief from the sexual saturation of the white man's drama. A point of paramount importance to the moment is that the Poly has been making box-office successes of these films to the extent of record runs. Besides being several times recalled, "Chang" at one of these periods ran nineteen consecutive weeks. This is proof to the world that in London alone exists a large white public interested in the life of his coloured brethren. It is not without a tinge of sorrow, one feels that in staking another chip on pre-releasing European's "Under the Southern Cross" the Poly has, save for pictorial and photographic beauty, missed its metier. The film is based on a Maori legend telling of the endeavours and their consequences, to unite the warring tribes of the Ariki and the Waitai into a single powerful unit, the mise-en-scene being the grand and exquisite environs of the volcano Rua-Taniwha. As the Maori is not a negro in the strictest sense, his presence in the May issue, perhaps, demands an apology. 128