Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000543 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 #:
000543
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
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CLOSE UP for humour, we want wit that isn't a substitute for anything, but a dash in the way of serving, a smile in the way of looking, a satire and sympathy, and w^e can go on talking like this, and projecting our own selves over a metaphysical moon, until we fail to notice what is happening at our feet. And I am very fond of what my feet are in touch with. I meant to write flatlv on sound imagerv, and I have begun saying hey-diddle-diddle, and got struck, thinking how often critics present the spectacle of moon-jumping cows. For the moon is a good way out of it when you are confronted with something new on earth, taking the moon as exotic symbol. Confronted with some new growth, which needs trouble and inward-delving to understand, and, perhaps of more immediate importance to you, fresh vocabulary to write with .... confronted with a forest of unblazed talkie-trees, it is easy to flv to the moon and dig up a bit of old cheese •(historical value), growing, alive — O, yes, but the wrong wav round. Jump over the moon and return with some •Griffith gorgonzola or a piece of Camembert Chaplin. Everyone wmH believe vou if you write about the revolutions Chaplin wrought, even if they think his films the worst argument you could possibly adduce, even if The Circus seems to them a danse macabre of daguerreotypes. Again, you can gnaw bits off the moon when there is nothing else, you imply, worth your attention. Write about an exotic actor, detect (laudibly, but a trifle lavenderishly) hints of Russian, O, damn that w^ord, cutting in an old Essanay, and miss, just because they are ordinary, the exciting things .that are happening on nice-smelling earth. 377