Close Up (Jul-Dec 1930)

Page scan 000615 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 #:
000615
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 Blue Express, then, at the avant-garde cinema. They plav records of Poulenc and Stravinsky. Avant-garde cinema. Avant-garde cinema in Bruxelles. Iha Trauberg's lilm runs on greased rails. The cutting sUcks up the story about the Chinese Express. Xon-representational sections give further speed. . . They say that the manager of the Palais des Beaux-Arts also has shares in the Chinese railways. He came to the Studio to see the him. The operator had to edit the copy as it was literally running through the machines. For these Russian lilms are a little too pro-Boer (if one mav skip a generation). Whv should an outcast family walk slowlv along the railwav lines just to offer contrast with the dame with false teeth sleeping in the luxury express ? All these contrasts and svmbols come to the mind at once and the mind rejects them because thev are too facile — or ought to reject them. On the other hand the programme included l^ive Dimanche by Robert Siadmak acted by real-life men and ^vomen. (You know. Thev gave that exhibition of life masks in London when our make-up, solidified at the end of the day, would have been truer. I mean we all wear masks, don't we?) Thev are charming types which rather gives the game awav : not anvone from life but selection. How coy, though, the film is, in spite of marvellous photography. Half the footage is taken up by a girl allowing a man to chase her through the woods I And what now ? Having seen the cinemas and Storck and actualities, wait for the Congress ? Or be a snapped-up journalist and discover Buyse ? Buyse says, " Story films in Belgium? Take your coat and hat and I will shoAV you one in the making." 407