R. Bruce Elder

Biography

Since 1975, R. Bruce Elder has been building two formidable bodies of work, as an artist working in the experimental tradition, and as an author of critical texts on art and cinema. His artistic achievements were recognized in 2007 with a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Canada’s most prestigious award in those field, and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. Jonas Mekas, founder of the New York Filmmakers Co-op and principle visionary of the American avant-garde cinema, has dubbed him “the most important North American avant-garde filmmaker to emerge during the 1980s.” Something similar could be said of Elder’s monumental works of art criticism. His role as an author has in recent years assumed the task of charting the relationship between cinema and art movements through the twentieth century, as we see in his recent book, DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect, his previous, Harmony & Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century, and the forthcoming Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect. In 2009, he received the Robert Motherwell Book Award from the Dedalus Foundation for Harmony + Dissent.

Directed

1. Illuminated Texts (1982) — Director
2. Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World (1985) — Director
3. The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1979) — Director
4. 1857 (Fool's Gold) (1981) — Director
5. Sweet Love Remembered (1980) — Director
6. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 3: The Body and the World (1988) — Director
7. Flesh Angels (1990) — Director
8. Et Resurrectus Est (1994) — Director
9. Burying the Dead (Into the Light) (1993) — Director
10. Crack, Brutal Grief (2000) — Director
11. A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (1997) — Director
12. Consolations (Love is an Art of Time) (1988) — Director
13. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing (1988) — Director
14. Breath/Light/Birth (1975) — Director
15. Permutations and Combinations (1976) — Director
16. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods (1988) — Director
17. Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness (1976) — Director
18. Look! We Have Come Through! (1978) — Director
19. She Is Away (1975) — Director
20. Exultations: In Light of the Great Giving (1993) — Director
21. Azure Serene (1992) — Director
22. Trace (1980) — Director
23. Newton and Me (1991) — Director
24. Unremitting Tenderness (1977) — Director
25. What Troubles the Peace at Brandenburg? (2011) — Director
26. A Gathering of Crystals (2015) — Director
27. The Young Prince (2007) — Director
28. Eros and Wonder (2003) — Director
29. Alone: All Flesh Shall See It Together (2024) — Director
30. Infunde Lumen Cordibus (2004) — Director
31. Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian (1985) — Director
32. Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation (1985) — Director
33. Return to Nature! The True Natural Method of Healing and Living and the True Salvation of the Soul: Paradise Regained—The Core of the Body—Water, Human Curative Power, Light, Air, Earth, Food, Fruit Culture (2012) — Director

Also appeared in

1. Illuminated Texts (1982) — Professor
2. The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1979)
3. Michael Snow Up Close (1996) — Himself
4. A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (1997)
5. Consolations (Love is an Art of Time) (1988)
6. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing (1988)
7. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods (1988)