Article

R. Bruce Elder

Published Online March 28, 2007

Last Edited March 4, 2015

His Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness won the 1976 Canadian Film Award for best experimental film and his autobiographical The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1979) was named Best Independent Experimental Film by the Los Angeles Critics Circle.

Elder, Richard Bruce

 Richard Bruce Elder, filmmaker, critic (b at Hawkesbury, Ont 12 June 1947). Internationally recognized for his avant-garde films and his writing on film, Canadian philosophy and computer technology, Elder studied film at Ryerson and the University Film Study Centre after graduating from the University of Toronto with an MA (philosophy) in 1970.

His Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness won the 1976 Canadian Film Award for best experimental film and his autobiographical The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1979) was named Best Independent Experimental Film by the Los Angeles Critics Circle. Elder's 1857: Fool's Gold (1980) and Illuminated Texts (1982) introduced an incorporation of written texts and use of computer-generated printing and sound that would be characteristic of his later work. His 8-hour work, Lamentations (1985), and his 14-hour Consolations (Love is an Art of Time) (1987) challenged the conventional length of film screenings.

In the 1990s, Elder embarked upon the project of consolidating his previous films and his ongoing work - Flesh Angels (1990), Newton and Me (1990), Azure Serene (1992), Exultations: In Light of the Great Giving (1993), Burying the Dead Into the Light (1993) and Et Resurrectus Est (1994) - into a single 40-hour program entitled The Book of All the Dead. The entire program was screened in 1995 in New York at the Anthology Film Archives, at the 1996 Senzatitolo in Trento, Italy, and in Toronto at Images 97. Other work includes A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (1997), Crack, Brutal, Grief (2001) and Infunde Lumen Cordibus (2003).

Elder's many writings are highlighted by his much discussed manifesto, "The Cinema We Need" (1985), and his book Image and Identity; Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture (1989). Other studies have been monographs on the American avant-garde cinema, A Body of Vision: The Image of the Body in Recent Film and Poetry and The Films of Stan Brakhage. In his career as a professor at RYERSON UNIVERSITY, Elder has mentored and profoundly influenced a generation of filmmakers. In 2007, Richard Bruce Elder received a GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD in visual and media arts.