{"id":121834,"date":"2026-02-17T15:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T20:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=121834"},"modified":"2026-02-18T13:00:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:00:02","slug":"feature-experimental-filmmaker-r-bruce-elders-alone-flesh-shall-see-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2026\/02\/17\/feature-experimental-filmmaker-r-bruce-elders-alone-flesh-shall-see-together\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE | Experimental Filmmaker R. Bruce Elder\u2019s Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Still
Still from R. Bruce Elder\u2019s film Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Filmmaker R. Bruce Elder\u2019s Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together) is an art film, an avant-garde film if you will, but to hear him talk about it, it\u2019s all about the sound.<\/p>\n

As he pointed out in an email, \u201c[…] Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together) is more closely related to Finnegans Wake<\/a> than any other work I have made \u2014 like the Wake, it is piece that draws on the experience of radio transmission and electric flows (and that makes my understanding of nature of sound the key shaping force).\u201d<\/p>\n

R. Bruce Elder, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, and the author of critical works on film and art, who first rose to international prominence as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1980s. For many years, he also taught at the now Toronto Metropolitan University. His work was recognized by a Governor General\u2019s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2007, and he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.<\/p>\n

A February 15, 2026 screening of the film took place at the Factory Media Centre in Hamilton, a non-profit housed in a former industrial building on Victoria Street North. The location was fortuitous, as Elder noted. Nikola Tesla played a key role in bringing electricity to Ontario, and in the late 1800s, the Hamilton location was the first building lit with Tesla\u2019s alternating current electricity<\/a>, transmitted from his ground breaking DeCew | Power Generating Station on the Welland Canal 56 km away.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will notice some very Tesla-espque imagery,\u201d he commented during his remarks prior to the screening.<\/p>\n

Electricity plays a vital role in the film.<\/p>\n

The film itself is a form of electromorphic art<\/a>, as he explained. It stems from electrology, or a way of understanding reality via electromagnetic technology. \u201cIt\u2019s made up of energy flows,\u201d he explains. \u201cNo wave form ever closes. And, that means that time is co-existant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Energy endures, he noted. It leads to his optimistic reading of digital technology \u2014 which has its undeniable dark side. Perhaps we can harness positive energy collectively, across time and space. Perhaps we can use it to create love and community to counter the violence of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

\"Still
Still from R. Bruce Elder\u2019s film Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Film<\/h2>\n

\u201cI consider this type of film I\u2019m making electric poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film unfolds in a flow of images, punctuated by texts, excerpts from a poem. As Elder explained in the Q&A after the screening, he wrote the poem first. The text appears in a gothic script on the screen, each excerpt consisting of a line or a few lines. Some of it read with a kind of historical voice, congruent with the gothic letters, while other parts were more modern in expression.<\/p>\n

There are five essential sections to the film. The first begins with single images, the second proceeds with two, then three and four, and the fifth section offers a multiplicity of images. As the sections progress, there is also more and more digital manipulation, which he actually shows in a few segments that depict an image in several versions \u2014 the original, a fractal version, and other digital manipulations, each displayed in a separate screen within a screen.<\/p>\n

The kinds of images are myriad, often repeated, sometimes digitally manipulated in various ways, and multiplied. The format of the film also changes, sometimes in a conventional horizontal orientation, other times, in a vertical formation, or as two smaller screens side by side.<\/p>\n

\"Still
Still from R. Bruce Elder\u2019s film Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What kind of images?<\/h3>\n

The flow begins with images of a church, both the exterior and the interior, including the altar, sculptures and other decorative elements. There are scenes from the grounds, and a garden, most taken during a trip to Seville, Spain.<\/p>\n

There are outdoor scenes that look much closer to home (he\u2019s based in Toronto), views of the power lines along train tracks, and the human form, including both historical images of nude figures (presumably from naturist gatherings), and Elder himself as model while someone else films him.<\/p>\n

Among other things.<\/p>\n

There are scenes of lightning and electric forms, some of them created with a miniature Tesla coil that he and his team constructed for the film.<\/p>\n

The complex flow of images are a visual representation of the underlying concept \u2014 that the past is connected to the future, that time can flow in reverse, that natural and manmade forms can blend together. Everything is everything.<\/p>\n

The kinetic soundtrack was largely created by Ajla Odoba\u0161i\u0107<\/strong>, a former student of Elder\u2019s at Toronto Metropolitan University, and mixed to 5.2 surround sound.<\/p>\n

The sounds flow along with the images, including background noises, trains, birdsongs, bits of music both very modern and recognizable, and narration of some of the lines from the poem. The sounds, particularly the narration, often overlap each other in different voices, and come from different spaces within the surround sound environment.<\/p>\n

\"Still
Still from R. Bruce Elder\u2019s film Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Elder on Elder<\/h3>\n

His invitation to the screening explains, \u201cWe all know that electric media have produced numerous degrading, all-pervasive forms of surveillance that have virtually eliminated that privacy which heretofore was a bastion of human dignity. But is it possible that electric media and their capacities for openness and revelation might result in a new form of transcendence?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis question constitutes the problematic of ALONE (ALL FLESH SHALL SEE IT TOGETHER) and the poem at the core of the work. The project embodies our (R. Bruce Elder and Ajla Odoba\u0161i\u0107\u2019s) imaginings of what the electric poetry of the future might be: a multi-focal, multi-medial form whose nature reflects the interpenetration of all energies everywhere and throughout time \u2014 an ethereal togetherness.\u201d<\/p>\n

He expanded on the idea during pre- and post-screening comments, using references largely from poetry (notably poet Kenneth Rexroth<\/strong>, and Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan<\/strong>) to contextualize his thoughts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as though time and space were a continuum,\u201d he said. The energy of an event in the past resonates into the future. \u201cAs we get farther away, they grow weaker, but do not disappear,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe future contained in the past […] that\u2019s the conception of time that went into the construction of the soundtrack to this film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Still
Still from R. Bruce Elder\u2019s film Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n

The film stills he provided for this feature focus, as he notes, \u201con images that suggest the work’s “electric\/digital” genesis; images suggesting Indra’s Net \u2014 images within images within images \u2014 which, I take to be implicit in the metaphysics of energy, and at the same time suggest the longing for transcendent that motivated to the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

While digital media has, and continues to, play a large role in fostering the current divisive state of the world, Elder persists in imagining a different result. Digital media can also bring us together, both across time and space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conditions are set for us to know each other intimately, and […] merge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis film is an effort to bring about that possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Filmmaker R. Bruce Elder\u2019s Alone (All Flesh Shall See It Together) is an art film, an avant-garde film if you will, but to hear him talk about it, it\u2019s all about the sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":121836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42533,42678,41441,23,6992,63],"tags":[42682,42681,42680,42679],"yst_prominent_words":[12167,11745,8590],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/Copy-of-FEATURE-27.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-vH4","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121834"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121853,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121834\/revisions\/121853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121834"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=121834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}