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 #:
000441
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP pictures of various performers. By craning, a duet could just squeeze their heads into the frame. Actually the film was being relayed from another room, but we were told that fifty miles would present no difficulty, and that the screen could be enlarged to the size of a door. Sound and synchronisation pretty nearly technically perfect ; images quite distinct, and curiously plastic owing to high chiaroscuro, but yery yellow in tone. We were, in effect, back in that penny peep show w^iich Edison tried to endow with phonograph synchronisation. Prophecy in these circumstances is excusable. Television itself suggests the time not far distant when the radio performer will appear — in colour and stereoscopy, no doubt, unless there is another Flood — on the home screen. That does not affect the cinema at all, because the essence of the cinema (or one essence) is that it is made in many different places and at many different times before being assembled. A stage play may be televised, but it will not be cinema or anything like it : it would aim no great blow at the cinema as an art or an industry. Nor would the contemporaneous exhibition of a battle in China, or a New York murder trial. But we must consider next the televising of a full talkingcolour-stereoscopic film made in the normal way in a normal factory. This does not affect the art of the screen at all : only the economics. From some central tower a master copy of the film will be relayed to a big cinema, to a chain of provincial cinemas, and to a million private hom.es. Expense of receiving sets will slightly limit the number of the latter, and desire for company will still bring people to the public hall. Perhaps the programme will be diversified 303