Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00085 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 #:
00085
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 do not allow anything like the pictures in the Xat. Gall, coming to life or a guide taking people round or anything of that sort. Now, these are just ideas that came into my head while people said " have you any idea of what you want done '\ and these may not be the best ideas. But I think I have given a scheme for a revue which IS a film-revue. Fifteen short films, some of which could be linked with sequences of traffic at the various times of the day ; market vans, then noon rush traffic, and homeward going traffic at six, and long cars with women in white furs later. I think these films go out in space and time, but all have something in common, and link on Trafalgar Square. And you will notice there is a theme, as there is a design. You throw against the men trying to earn their life (match-sellers, street entertainers, their Royal Majesties), the pigeons trying to get their food in this one bit of traffic-ringed square. And this gets the design. Pigeons in the square, and the men circling and diagonalling all round. Now the lights which begin the film are static, though they go in and out, and movement is given to the screen; whereas the architectural short which ends the revue is made up of buildings which are panningly seen, though they do not move themselves, and yet are open. I mean, the impression of lights in darkness is that of closing in, and that has its effect of locating the film, and fixing it round the column ; whereas buildings from different angles and collected from all sides of the square, and being those visible from the square, lead the mind outwards. Between the two occur these turns and films. 55