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 #:
000542
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 OVER THE MOON It was the cow that did it first, and Fritz Lang followed. Forgive me, please. What an extraordinary world it was. Why did the cow jump over the moon ? Did she feel drawn to it bv dairy-associations with cheese, and did she with one fell hoof kick the (milk) bucket and jump to a dimension where the only cheese was dead, and inorganic moon ? Then again, why is the cat always credited with interest in the fiddle, and not the dog? The dog, you will remember, only barked — to see such fun. But the cat went with the fiddle, perhaps in an effort to improve its voice, foreseeing the days of a synchronised Felix, but in any case, who knows? The fun the dog liked was nothing he saw in the cinema, in those days, and if we wished to have this absurd series of events pan-chronised, what kind of a kingdom would it be? The movies leave it alone. The screen is the window of fantasy but this special fantasy and all it means, if anything, and what it did to us, a lot, has the blind pulled over it. We say, a man of imagination should do this for us. A man of imagination should bring wit and amusement to the screen, and we get Lotte Reiniger, which isn't quite the same. And Robert Florey isn't really witty And then again, we don't want wit that is the intellectual substitute 576