Illuminated Texts
Jan 27 1982
•3h 54m
•Documentary
"Breathtaking in its techniques, rhapsodic in its passion, and encyclopedic in its scope, the film traces the long fall from paradise into modern barbarism." - Art Gallery of Ontario
Cast
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R. Bruce Elder
Professor
Anna Pafomow
Student
Henry Jesionka
Diabolus
James D. Smith
Man in workshop with goggles
Recommendations
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Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World
Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World belongs to a 35-hour film cycle, The Book of All the Dead, which comprises the bulk of Toronto-based Bruce Elder’s filmmaking from 1975 to 1994. In ancient Egyptian culture, the Book of the Dead consisted of religious texts intended to help preserve the spirit of the departed in the afterlife — but in Elder’s reading, that comforting idea of continuity takes on a rather darker cast. Lamentations is comprised of a complex audio and visual patchwork: a philosophical meditation superimposed as text throughout the film; vignettes featuring a comical but disturbing Franz Liszt, a debate between Isaac Newton and George Berkeley, an angry, deranged man in an alley, and an arrogant psychiatrist; and a final search for salvation in the forests of British Columbia, the American Southwest, and Mexico’s Yucatan.
Brutal Ardour
Experimental film by Manuel Huerga.
The Swan Princess: The Mystery of the Enchanted Kingdom
The royal couple Odette and Derek face yet another evil magician, this time a woman named Zelda. Lusting for the treasure of the Forbidden Arts, which will give her absolute power, Zelda kidnaps Odette as ransom. Derek and several animal friends head off to rescue Odette