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 #:
000461
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 attempt to baffle the public. There are countless heads of •'Bobby", "Joan", and "Carol". There are wishy moons and smudgy nothings. There are the properties of threads of garlands, flower bowls and all the rest of the bunk. ]\Iadame Yvonne, however, has a pleasant innovation. She joins the profile of two sitters in quite an attractive manner. The advertising work of Howard Coster has vitalitv, and he makes use of the trick of cutting out his heads and pasting them on a careful mount. OSWELL BlAKESTON. LIGHT AND SHADE. Ax Abstract Film by Gussy Lauwson This is one of the many avant garde shorts which Mr. Stuart Davis is bringing to the Avenue Pavilion. There are virile groupings of white cubes and cones rotating in light, there is the sudden movement of a varnished ball catching a high-light, there are time patterns with circular objects, and giddy eft'ects with bars and streaks. It is, in a way, terribly smart, terribly d la mode, yet cute. I should like to see it again to be able to give fuller details as it well deserves less cursory attention. Two stills are in this issue. O. B. 323