Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000213 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 #:
000213
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 a question of satire : Jacque Feyder's Les Nouveaux Messieurs : the meaning was completely missed. Quick rise labour " ministers and the humour of slumbering deputies or an assembly of " desk-bangers " did not succeed. American films are numerous; but Broadway Melody and the Fairbankian Iron Mask were both appreciated above the average. Of mixed American manufacture, Sternberg's Docks of New York, Murnaus' Four Devils and Stroheim's Wedding March were noted. A country may be democratic and have an aristocracy; may be capitalistic and have powerful Communist parties; may be universal but very cosmopolitan. The Argentine combines all these points. It also revels in freedom. Result : Buenos Aires is the perfect cinema cosmopolitan town. In the grand assimilation of the films of all countries it is a successful melting pot. And the purely artistic, the purely political, the purely propaganda, the purely culture : all these ideas are sifted and taken. And no one minds what tendency as long as there is good cinema. Indeed, one thinks that others (especially censors) might learn much from such a centre of cinema freedom. H. P. Tew. 145