Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00092 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 #:
00092
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 expectation ; with an impatient demand for the morrow. We are no longer assured of the stability of anything. And nowhere is there greater sensitivity to this restlessness, this uncertainty, this evanescent quality of conditions, than in Hollywood, California. For the nonce it is labouring day and night to advantage itself of the momentary clamour for audible films. Each day sees more theatres equipped for the showing of this novelty, while the multitude of them still eagerly waiting to fall into line offer the prospect of a rich and an abundant market. So far, so good. Making hay while the sun shines is second nature to Hollywood. And the sun certainly is now shining on the Hollywood cinema fields, and a veritable plethora of hay is in the making. Paramount-Laskv alone has no less than two-hundred talking and musical productions scheduled for release during the coming twelve months. Sixty-eight feature-length films — dramas, operas, musical revu-es. Eighty-one two-reel comedies and speciality acts. Fifty-two issues of talking pictorial news. Fox has over fifty big features planned. M-G-M, forty or more, in addition to a hundred-and-ninety other releases. Warner Brothers, First National, United Artists, Inspiration, Pathe, RKO, Universal, Columbia — all are correspondingly lavish in their preparations and promises for the ensuing year. Hollywood has never been more bus)^ or more prodigal. In its feverish desire to improve the shining hour — to garner the shekels while the garnering is good — it has combed the world for talent and novelty and famous names. Celebrities in the realms of music, of the theatre, of literature, of drama, of art are flocking to the film capital, to 62