Bruce Elder's Film Digital Hybrids & Materialist Historiography
Millennium Film Journal, Fall 2012, pp. 30-40
A notable tendency of digital experimental filmmaking is the hybrid use of film and digital video that brings into relief the materiality of both mediums. Canadian experimental filmmaker R. Bruce Elder is one of the filmmakers who have produced "film-digital hybrids" by developing his own "hydramedia." Kim examines Elder's two feature-length, film-digital hybrids of the 2000s, 'Crack, Brutal Grief" (2001) and "The Young Prince" (2007), in terms of how his attempts at intersecting the materiality of digital video with that of film are extended into his found-footage filmmaking. Elder's hybrid materialism applied to found-footage filmmaking channels the materiality of film and digital video into an investigation of the cultural and historical dimensions of the images. Kim situates Elder's found footage works within the framework of "materialist historiography," suggesting that his hybrid filmmaking puts film and digital images into a dialectical relation.
ITEM 2012.126 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Crack, Brutal Grief (2001) – R. Bruce Elder
The Young Prince (2007) – R. Bruce Elder