R. Bruce Elder

Known for: Directing
Born: June 12, 1947 (age 79)
Birthplace: Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, Canada

Biography

Since 1975, R. Bruce Elder (born 12 June 1947) 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.

Known For

Illuminated Texts

Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

1857 (Fool's Gold)

Sweet Love Remembered

A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy

Consolations (Love is an Art of Time)

Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 3: The Body and the World

Flesh Angels

Et Resurrectus Est

Burying the Dead (Into the Light)

Crack, Brutal Grief

Filmography

2024

Alone: All Flesh Shall See It Together

Movie · Director

2015

A Gathering of Crystals

Movie · Director

2012

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

Movie · Director

2011