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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.A1 C63 1998
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.A1 C63 1998
Close Up, a film journal published in the years between 1927 and 1933, was the first English language journal dedicated to the cinema as an 'art.' It became the vanguard model for a certain type of writing about cinema. Close Up was the site of a range of speculations about film technology (its publication envelops the transition to sound), film style (its critics advocated a variety of national cinemas), and film subject matter (its editors fought against censorship of Soviet films and had a pioneering interest in, what they called, the 'Negro viewpoint' film.) Both critical and theoretical writing in the journal show an abiding concern with the experimental film, alternate forms of exhibition made possible by the cine-club and film-society movement, cinema as an educational tool, and serious theoretical writing (including numerous translations of articles by Eisenstein.) Many of the contributors to Close Up were writers who are known for their literary careers and not for their interest in cinema. Close Up published a strong contingent of literary women writing on cinema--H. D., Dorothy Richardson, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore. The journal also included pieces by a number of prominent psychoanalysts--Hanns Sachs, Barbara Low and the sexologist Havelock Ellis. POOL, the production company which published Close Up, also sponsored several film projects. H. D. and Kenneth Macpherson, the editor-in-chief, worked on at least three film projects together. The most ambitious, a feature-length film Borderline (1930), with Paul Robeson and H. D., displays the influence of Soviet montage theory, theories which Close Up had a central role in transmitting to English-speaking audiences.
Donald, James, Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus, eds. Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism. Princeton, Princeton UP, 1998.
Offers a very generous selection of articles printed in Close Up from 1927 to 1933. The anthology is organized into eight parts:
Part 1, "Enthusiasms and Execrations" on the potentials of various national and independent cinemas (introduced by James Donald);
Part 2, "From Silence to Sound" on the controversy of the coming of sound, which the editors of Close Up generally opposed (also introduced by James Donald);
Part 3, "The Contribution of HD" which reprints many of HD's theoretical essays and reviews of films (introduced by Laura Marcus);
Part 4, "Continuous Performance: Dorothy Richardson" which reprints many pieces from Richardson's "Coninuous Performance" column (introduced by Laura Marcus);
Part 5, "Borderline and the POOL films" which includes HD's pamphlet on Borderline, the 1931 film in which she starred with Paul and Eslanda Robeson (introduced by Anne Friedberg);
Part 6. "Cinema and Psychoanalysis" which includes a variety of film critics and psychoanalysts on the relationship between film and psychology/psychoanalysis (introduced by Laura Marcus).
Part 7, "Cinema Culture" on the political and educational potential of film (introduced by James Donald and Anne Friedberg);
Part 8, "Fade" marks Close Ups ending and the coming of World War II.
Appendices include the full table of contents of all issues of Close Up; contributors notes; Publishng history including POOL books; and Anne Friedberg's Chronology of Close Up in Context (reprinted from her dissertation (NYU 1983)).