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.
R. Bruce Elder
Director, Writer
Robert Fothergill
Narrator (voice)
Kristina Jones
Narrator (voice)
David King
Isaac Newton
James D. Smith
Franz Liszt
Tony Wolfson
Bishop Berkeley
Murray Pomerance
Psychiatrist
Bart Testa
Lecturer
Sherman's March67%
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty77%
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library64%
The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button69%
Lake of Fire70%
Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner78%
The Corporation76%
National Gallery73%
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema73%
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward71%
HyperNormalisation75%
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th78%
Live Aid79%
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show79%
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media76%
Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy78%
Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon81%
Springsteen on Broadway79%
The Untold History Of The United States81%
Spielberg75%
