Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy, A

“Having recently completed his monumental film cycle, ‘The Book of All the Dead,’ Elder begins a new cycle – ‘The Book Of Praise’ – with ‘A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy.’ Elder believes that, by using speed and by creating constructions which incorporate a number of attractions that contend with each other for attention, a filmmaker can produce a form of experience that bypasses the intellect and goes straight to the body and the senses. Accordingly, he creates dense, elaborate films that make use of intricate montage construction, complex collage (combining simultaneous multiple images) and layered sound construction. In his new film, Elder depicts forms of life that have grown increasingly out of touch with the body, and attempts to elicit and experience of the delight that results from reconnecting with our natural being.” – Cinematheque Ontario, March 1998 “There arose within me a new sense, a delight still physical (since understanding had no role in it). But all animation ceased, not in torpor, but in bliss. Each spacious moment seemed to exist apart from succession, and from all that is successive, as a temporal form of eternity. Space no longer stretched away from the body, but so filled up with sense of place no difference from my sense of my own body. Shadow willingly entered into the clutch of light, and all was radiant. The worm that eats the rose departed.” – R. Bruce Elder “The sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning, And the mild moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night, And Man walks forth from midst of the fires: the evil is all consum’d. His eyes behold the Angelic spheres arising night and day; The stars consum’d like a lamp blown out in their stead, behold The Expanding Eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds! One Earth, one sea beneath; nor Erring Globes wander, but Stars Of fire rise up nightly from the Ocean; and one Sun Each morning, like a New born Man, issues with songs and joy Calling the Plowman to his labour and the Shepherd to his rest. …The hammer of Urthona sounds In the deep caves beneath; his limbs renew’d, his Lions roar Around the furnaces and in Evening sport upon the plains. They raise their faces from the Earth, conversing with the Man: How is it we have walk’d thro’ fires and yet are not consum’d? How is it that all things are chang’d, even as in ancient times?’” – from William Blake’s Vala, or The Four Zoas, “Night the Ninth”