Close Up (Jul-Dec 1930)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000485
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP in India? That, of course, is the least important thing; the riots are our fauk, and due to the outlook that produces such a film. But what really worried me, being not in the least religious in the creed sense, was the very bad fun made of another race's religion. It isn't very amusing to see a Margate Pedler doing slapstick in a temple, and I don't care whether that temple is the Taj Mahal, or St. Paul's. It isn't my idea of fun to knock an image over, take its place and, opening a door in its stomach, make funny faces through it. It isn't funny in this case, not only because it mightn't be very funny anyhow, but because we could not do it with our own creeds. No one would allow a charwoman out on a spree to take the place of ]\Iary, Mother of God, m an Italian church ; no one would think of using a crucifix as a property in slapstick. Xo one would even agree that a temple (of any other creed) was a suitable setting for love scenes, comic or otherwise. But because this is India, all this is excessively funny and gay. British films are looking up, and the censor smiles on it and bans Martin Luther, because it might offend Roman Catholics.* We hear a lot of the loss of white prestige among natives " through films showing white men as monsters and white women as ]\Iessalinas (these are understood to be American pictures) ; we know that that is why black and bro^^'n and yellow races are getting so " bumptious." We say it is misrepresentation. But what can this film be? If it is misrepresentation, it is evil, degrading and all the things And everyone found Pudovkin's lamasery scenes ** offensive mockery of religious beliefs of an ancient civilization." — Ed. ■307