Close Up (Jul-Dec 1930)

Page scan 000108 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000108
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 the very first day of the October Revolution, and at the present time the Sovkino Cuhural Fihn Factory issues a weekly journal, of which the 200th number was issued in April, 1929. The news-film material is preserved in special museums at the various film organizations and is used for incorporation in other so-called " documentary films " — i.e., films based on photographs of scenes from actual life. The films illustrated in this album date between 1926 and 1929, and the majority of them are Sovkino films, but other film organizations, such as Wifku, Mezhrabpom, etc., are also represented. They include a number of extremelv interesting travel films, such as The Gate of the Caucasus, The Country of the Xachkho (Chechen), The Roof of the World (The Pamir), The Heart of Asia (Afghanistan), which not only afford striking illustrations of the scenery of these regions, but also of the natural resources and the mode of life in little-known districts and among little-known tribes. Among scientific films there is the famous Mechanics of the Human Brain, embodying the results of Professor Pavlov's investigations into conditioned reflexes (made by Mezhrabpom in 1926) and a more recent film, The Problem of Nourishment, concerned v\'ith questions of digestion and nourishment, also based on the researches of Professor Pavlov and made by Sovkino in 1928. Then there is The Fight for Health, made by Sovkino in 1928-9 and illustrating the achievements of ten years of Soviet medicine, and Alcohol, made by Sovkino in 1929 and designed to show the evil effects of alcoholism. A Day in the Day-Nurseries of the City gives a pleasant and instructive picture of the work that is being done m these institutions for the protection of mother 74