The Book of Praise (1997 - )
To view high-resolution versions of the films comprised in The Book of Praise in their entirety,
go to https://vod.re-voir.com/films/2024/book-of-praise
To view high-resolution versions of the films comprised in The Book of Praise in their entirety,
go to https://vod.re-voir.com/films/2024/book-of-praise
"Having recently completed his monumental film cycle, 'The Book of All the Dead,' Elder begins a new cycle - 'The Book Of Praise' - with 'A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy.' Elder believes that, by using speed and by creating constructions which incorporate a number of attractions that contend with each other for attention, a filmmaker can produce a form of experience that bypasses the intellect and goes straight to the body and the senses. Accordingly, he creates dense, elaborate films that make use of intricate montage construction, complex collage (combining simultaneous multiple images) and layered sound construction. In his new film, Elder depicts forms of life that have grown increasingly out of touch with the body, and attempts to elicit and experience of the delight that results from reconnecting with our natural being."
- Cinematheque Ontario, March 1998.
“Powerful and raw, ‘Crack, Brutal, Grief’ is an impressive extension of R. Bruce Elder's obsessions with history, media culture, psychology, technology, and the cruelty found in nature. The film acts as a primal scream, literally and metaphorically. The point of departure for the film came shortly after the gruesome suicide of Elder's close friend.
122 min. colour 2000
(Sound by Greg Boa and Alex Geddie)
“A hybrid of analogue and digital techniques in which chemical transformations of the image are combined with electrical modifications to produce a fantasia of vibrantly coloured alchemical forms that suggest an erotic wonder at all the world’s surfaces.”
-Cinematheque Ontario
“INFUNDE LUMEN CORDIBUS was made using principles derived from Stephen Wolfram’s work on cellular automata (‘A New Kind of Science’) to determine the content and colour of the shots, their duration, and the time of their appearance: the palette of effects, and their rhythmical development... is entirely the result of computational processes that model natural events. John Cage instructed us that art should imitate nature in its manner of operation; I have tried to take the lesson. The music was composed, using related principles, by Colin Clark with the assistance of Josh Thorpe” (R. Bruce Elder). The film’s title translates as “Flood my heart with light” and is best known from a hymn, ascribed to St. Ambrose, used for Sunday Vespers.
22 min. colour 2004
(Assisted by Erika Loic, Alla Gadassik, Ajla Odobasic et al.) A beggar imagines himself sitting at the edge of a maelstrom, looking inward at a vortex, observing beings – demonic forms, ghosts, animals, humans – first rising, and then falling through the vortex: all of them, he realizes have the character they do because of his evanescent mental states. What is seen is never made of anything but imagination. Beyond that lies nothingness.
125 min. colour 2007
All about red and green in time. Very much inspired by the work of Count Hermann Puckler-Muskau, Adolf Just and, above all, Gerhard Richter. A mnemotechnic and threnody for the infirm of Brandenburg an der Havel and environs during a time of hate (too like our own).
2:04:00 min. colour / sound 2011
139 min. colour 2015
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
7:20 min. colour 2012
