R. Bruce Elder
- Known for
- Directing
- Born
- June 12, 1947
- Birthplace
- Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, Canada
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.
Filmography
Alone: All Flesh Shall See It Together 2024
Director
Potamkin 2017
Thanks
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
- Eros and Wonder
Eros and Wonder 2003
Director
Crack, Brutal Grief 2000
Director, Cinematography, Editor, Sound
A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy 1997
Actor, Director, Director of Photography
Michael Snow Up Close 1996
as 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 3: The Body and the World 1988
Director
Consolations (Love is an Art of Time) 1988
Actor, Director, Writer
Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods 1988
Actor, Director
Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing 1988
Actor, Director
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation 1985
Director
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian 1985
Director
Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World 1985
Director, Editor, Producer, Director of Photography, Writer
Illuminated Texts 1982
as Professor, Director, Writer
1857 (Fool's Gold) 1981
Director
Trace 1980
Director
Sweet Love Remembered 1980
Director, Music
The Art of Worldly Wisdom 1979
Actor, Director, Director of Photography
Look! We Have Come Through! 1978
Director
- Unremitting Tenderness
Unremitting Tenderness 1977
Director
Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness 1976
Director
Permutations and Combinations 1976
Director
She Is Away 1975
Director
Breath/Light/Birth 1975
Director
Credits from TMDB.