Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00084
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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76 CLOSE UP arches of the cathedral stand immovable and — seen in different lighting and from different angles — they reveal to the observer such dramatic motion as otherwise is revealed only to the learned and very attentive observer. Apropos architecture : Two Germans who work on films have announced that they want to transpose phoneticallv with the photo cell the light reactions of plastics, and to compose them with their parallel visual impressions to> obtain sound film accords. This extremity must have been suggested by the experiments of Oscar Fischinger whose compositions of dancing lines are the onlv kind of abstract film which can be found in the regular programme of the German cinemas, and which are well received by the public. Fischinger, who originally bv synchronisation of his studies made real record pieces, has been trying recently — in order to obtain a more complete unity of picture and sound — to record decorative music in the Lichtongerat (light-sound) apparatus. Simpler, more thorough and practical seem to be the similar endeavours of Rudolf Pfenniger, who after a long and difficult analysis, was successful in the calculation of sound writings, and also in drawing them with the hand. His " Sounds from Nowhere " sound rather strange and hollow for the present, like stopped up wooden instruments, but were composed for several voices, and seem to be quite a suitable acoustical background for marionette and trick films. Thinking of these somewhat impetuous experiments, and that these last months have confirmed the talent of two or three very young directors — finally, that the German musical film comedy has become more ingenious, even genuine and really amusing — then one would be almost inclined to forget that one German film company after the other is breaking down, and that the total sum of passive debts for the last years seems to be more than 20,000,000 Rm. One would be almost inclined to forget that the position of Ufa within the range of German film work means an incontestable, financial, organic, technical, artistic and philosophic monopolisation of the German film. And to-day this danger is greater and more urgent than ever. One neglects it because of the promising experiments of outsiders— exactly as one slights the darkness of the situation in Europe, as soon as somewhere a light — no matter how faint — happens to penetrate the darkness, and an optimist seeing it thinks: Day-break! A. Kraszxa-Krausz.