close up - Monoskop

INTRODUCTION 9
the 1930s - one of the journal's key battles with British film culture - was effectively
elided. 24 The editors of Close Up were on the Council of the Federation of Workers' Film
Societies (FOWFS), and they argued the cause of Soviet cinema as well as the German
social realists Pabst and Metzner. Close Up was involved in challenging the dominant
prejudices of the film industry, but it did so in terms not directly political or ideological.
Rather, it typified a vanguard modernism less directly allied with political action than
with experimentation in aesthetic form.
Close Up and the 'borderline' subject: all over the map
In the spring of 1927, the collective enterprise known as TOOL' was 'announced' in
advertisements placed in select literary and film magazines:
POOL
is announced.
It has projects. It will mean, concerning books, new hope.
It has projects. It will mean, concerning cinematography, new beginning.
New always. Distinguished, and with a clear course.
BOOKS
FILMS
... encouragement.
CLOSE UP, a monthly magazine to begin battle for film art. Beginning July.
The first periodical to approach films from any angle but the commonplace. To
encourage experimental workers, and amateurs. Will keep in touch with every
country, and watch everything. Contributions on Japanese, Negro viewpoints and
problems, etc. Some of the most interesting personages of the day will write. 25
With manifesto-like declarations, POOL began as a publisher of books, a producer of
films and the publisher of a monthly magazine Close Up. The metaphor implicit in the
name expressed a combination of a 'pool' of resources and 'pool' as a surface for
reflection. 26 Although the actual members of POOL were not officially listed on any of
their publications, Close Up referred to Kenneth Macpherson as its 'Editor' and Bryher as
'Assistant Editor'. Bryher and Macpherson were unknown to the readers they courted.
Close Up was launched to give them a voice. 27 The poet H.D. was a less visible - yet
essential - accomplice. Indeed 'pool' may have seemed a suitable metaphor for the fluid
and yet quite complicated relationships that existed between H.D., Bryher and
Macpherson. 28
POOL books and Close Up were pursued with similar intensity. Between 1927 and
1929, POOL published eight handsomely produced books: two novels by Macpherson,
one memoir by Bryher, one memoir by her younger brother and four film-related
books. 29 But by 1929, it became apparent that Close Up was the more important POOL
publication.