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 #:
000513
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Global Cinema, 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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP There is a lot of good acting in this film. Dolly dancing on the piano, on the window, on the roof, Dolly in trousers, with much on, with less on ; and some of her fellow-actors are excellent. But — YOU go and make a good film from this scenario ! Is it really necessary that the sound-film has to go through all the stages of theatre, and to combine all the nonsense of musical comedies and shows ? And, dear me, how do the authors rack their brains to make an original beginning ; but I am sure, this time they succeeded marvellously : for the actors present themselves by stepping out from a big heart painted on a picture postcard. Sweet and so svmbolical, isn't it? T. W. CINEMA LITERATURE I. FRANCE. At 2.37 p.m. upon a June afternoon in 1922, Abel Gance made a list of his artistic preferences.* From Ronsard, Homer, Hugo, Poe, via de Vinci, Rembrandt, Watteau, to Stendhal, Balzac and Tolstov. At 4.45 p.m. Gance's preferences had changed and a more thrilling list is presented. Novalis, Rimbaud, Cendrars, ^ Prisme by Abel Gance. (Published by Libraire Gallimard.) 335