Event
R. Bruce Elder: LamentationsMonument to a Dead World
Presented in association with Shapeshifters Cinema and Canyon Cinema Foundation
Program curated and introduced by Stephen Broomer
How doth the city sit solitary, That was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations. Behold, Oh Lord; for I am in distress: My bowels are troubled; Mine heart is turned within me; For I have grievously revelled; Abroad the sword bereaveth, At home, there is as death. (The Lamentations of Jeremiah, 5:13)
Bruce Elder's The Book of All the Dead, a 40-hour cycle of films begun 1975 and completed in 1994, was charted as a totalizing, ultimate work, a film-to-end-all-films akin to the epic projects in modernist poetry undertaken by Ezra Pound, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky and others, a work to reflect the energy of the individual and of their day, bound neither by conventions of form nor length/duration. Upon its completion, Stan Brakhage wrote, I feel closer to this epic-maker Elder than to any other living film-maker: and yet I feel an aesthetic opposition of such intensity that I'm certain I'll be the rest of my life working Uphill to off-set this grand haunt. Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, completed in two parts in 1985, is the first and shortest of three long subsections of Elders cycle, followed by Consolations (Love is an Art of Time) and Exultations (In Light of the Great Giving). In Lamentations, a complex interweaving of image and text is paired with skits, episodes featuring characters drawn from history (such as Franz Liszt and Sir Isaac Newton), others featuring characters of his own invention (an arrogant psychiatrist; a nude woman in body paint; a deranged, raving man), and Elders striking, from-the-hip documental photography of rites and rituals, kinetic expression, and the menace and salvation of nature, as he journeys through the landscapes of the Yucatán, western Canada and the American southwest. By these paths, Elder composes a dirge to mans alienation from the divine. (Stephen Broomer)
SCREENING:
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian (1985) by R. Bruce Elder; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 201 minutes
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation (1985) by R. Bruce Elder; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 240 minutes
SPECIAL SCREENING NOTES: The total running time of Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World is 441 minutes (7 hours, 21 minutes). Introductions by program curator Stephen Broomer and filmmaker R. Bruce Elder will be made at noon with the film presented thereafter. Circa 4pm, there will be a short intermission (between Lamentations, Parts 1 & 2) for a catered meal break (with filmmaker and curator in attendance). Attendees are welcome to bring food and beverages to this screening as well. The increased admission rate is intended to offset costs of this catering. There will likely be informal discussion following the screening (circa 9pm).
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LocationShapeshifters Cinema (View)
567 5th St.
Oakland, CA 94607
United States
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