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 #:
000255
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP And now, rather pathetically, rather worse off than ever before, the big men of the west are seeing once more those Wall Street bludgeons — maces of the magnate monarchs. Talking pictures a flop ? No, there is great virtue in not leaping to conclusions. In a civilized world survival is rarely of the fittest. Talking pictures may quite well live. And this need not be disappointing, for they are not the rich relative whose every going to rest you hope may be his last. They are, in fact, very poor. A specialist could diagnose them, perhaps make them fit to be the friends of man. Close Up would offer its services for a very high fee. But that's just what they want to avoid. Kenneth Macpherson. PHASES OF CINEMA UNITY III Very little, if any, attention has been paid to light as unity. The fact that the quality of lighting or filtering in a film is not uniform has generally called forth criticism of what people call technique. But uniformity can be judged only from the viewpoint of unity. Similarly, diversity of lightquality, of tone and pitch, is the concern of unity. Technique permits weaknesses that unity declares injurious. For instance, take the common practice of inserting frames from 171