Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000190 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 #:
000190
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP the town anxious for cat skins (much used in certain parts of Europe) gets up and persuades tliem to make a bye-law, providing" that stray cats may be killed immediately. His excuse is a mad cat has attacked him. This is done in a cartoon. It is worked in most amusingly in the middle of the film itself and the scene changes from the council hall to the cartoon of the dealer being pursued by a gigantic cat, and back from this to the ordinary view of the council hall. The bye-law^ is passed. The dealer offers twopence each for any cat skin brought him, and the Town Clerk, a lover of animals, rushes to warn the Tertia, a class roughly corresponding to the Lower Fifth in England, full of children about fourteen or fifteen years of age. The Tertia filled with indignation, plan revenge. At this point, however, another interest is worked into the story. There are forty boys in the Tertia but onlv one girl. I objected to this as unlikely, but was assured bv friends in Germany that although co-education was growing, frequentlv there are only two or three girls in a class of bovs. But the girl Daniela, can run faster and climb better than the boys. They are at point to elect their class-leader and Daniela would have been elected, had she not, being a dog lover, felt the enthusiasm for cats a little too violent, and if she had not, therefore, made an indiscreet remark upon the subject. Her rival, a boy, is therefore elected as leader. Whereupon she walks off and sulks. This seemed strange to English psychology and I felt that it was being dragged in to make a drama of the male and female attitudes. I argued that any girl who had so accepted the community atmosphere as to have nearlv been elected leader of a group, w^ould have been 130