Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00022 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00022
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 LP and love for the film and belief in its future were regarded as signs of infantilism, had been hard at work expounding, criticising, arousing and diffusing interest in the art of cinematography, and demonstrating its quality by the reproduction of stills from films by continental artists that help to make the volumes of their periodical such priceless possessions) launched their assault upon the main barriers. These are two : the censorship, whose ambiguous, astonishing restrictions, set forth in the Februarv, 1929, number of Close Up, account for the mutilation to the point of destruction of almost all foreign films shown in this country, and the customs duties whose rate is prohibitive for all but those films that are certain of a large commercial success. The petition appealed therefore, primarily for the creation, on behalf of films of artistic, scientific and educative value, of a special category; a category independent of the two already in existence into which all films whatsoever are dropped, after censorship and resultant cutting down to the measure of the rules — those considered unsuitable for children going into A (Adults) categorv, and all the rest into U (Universal). In the second place it was pleaded that the board of censors should include persons capable of judging artistic and scientific films on their intrinsic value rather than their commercial possibilities, and it was further suggested that such films, when released for limited showing, should be automatically entitled to a large rebate of customs duties and reduction of entertainment tax. That Close Up readers should be willing to sign such a petition was of course to be expected and the immediate results of canvassing* the general public showed that if time had 8