Director
R. Bruce Elder
79 years · Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, Canada · 32 films
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.
Best known for
Filmography 32
Alone: All Flesh Shall See It Together
2024 · Director
A Gathering of Crystals
2015 · Director
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
What Troubles the Peace at Brandenburg?
2011 · Director
The Young Prince
2007 · Director
Infunde Lumen Cordibus
2004 · Director
Crack, Brutal Grief
2000 · Director, Editor
A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy
1997 · Actor, Director
Michael Snow Up Close
1996 · Himself
Et Resurrectus Est
1994 · Director
Burying the Dead (Into the Light)
1993 · Director
Exultations: In Light of the Great Giving
1993 · Director
Azure Serene
1992 · Director
Newton and Me
1991 · Director
Flesh Angels
1990 · Director
Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing
1988 · Actor, Director
Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods
1988 · Actor, Director
Consolations (Love is an Art of Time)
1988 · Actor, Director
Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 3: The Body and the World
1988 · Director
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation
1985 · Director
Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World
1985 · Director, Writer
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian
1985 · Director
Illuminated Texts
1982 · Professor, Director
1857 (Fool's Gold)
1981 · Director