Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00058 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 #:
00058
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 And this is universal. This is the community faced with progress in any part of the world. To watch this scene in The General Line is to see, not a desolate Russian village, but the world faced with the first application of anaesthetics, the world faced with birth control or with anv demand for freedom to live from those it has been accustomed to treat as slaves. The very old, the hopeless, the verv voung, these form the community farm. And its first success comes when the\" are given a separator and are able to make butter. Up to this point there has been unitv. But from this moment it is not easy to decide exactly what was Eisenstein's design. For the series of sequences that follow repeat this central idea, miser}-, revolt, opposition to progress, the beginning of success. Each section is beautiful, both in conception and photography, but actuallv it is repetition rather than the drive forward of an idea. By communal labour the workers are able to save enough money to bu}' a pedigree bull. Finall\-, h(_»wever, they decide to share the money amongst themselves, which is opposed by Lapkina. She is beaten to the ground, but the delegate of the Soviet arrives at the critical moment and the workers are persuaded to purchase instead the bull they need so badlv. \^iews follow of a mode! farm and of the purchase and removal to the village of Fomka, a pedigree bull. Labourers come from the citv for a holida}' and help the villagers to rebuild their village. There is talk of tractors, which is met with derision as usual. A shot of pigs plunging into the water follows. This is cross cut with pigs going through various processes in rb.e slaughter house and 36