The Book of All the Dead in order

The Book of All the Dead, R. Bruce Elder's 42-hour-long first cycle, gathers films he made between 1975 and 1994. 21 films, 36h 56m in all, in release order.

Breath/Light/Birth
1975 · 6 min
Video transformations of documentary footage of a woman giving birth, assisted by members of a religious commune. Isolation confronts the communal, the gruesome confronts the holy in this most mysterious of events.
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She Is Away
1975 · 13 min
"evokes absence through elliptical continuity and loneliness through the repetition of ... archetypal images" Ian Birnie
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Permutations and Combinations
1976 · 8 min
A close container for chance elements. Together with She Is Away, makes apparent some features of the material form of which the entire cycle would be composed.
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Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness
1976 · 8 min
The optical manipulation of tone, shape, line and movement creates a purely cinematic choreography.
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Look! We Have Come Through!
1978 · 11 min
"a revelation of the editing process ... done with remarkable care and precision ... The interrelationship between moving body and moving camera is heightened to the intensity of a struggle." Joyce Nelson
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The Art of Worldly Wisdom
1979 · 55 min
A compelling and revealing exploration of one person's psyche in crisis.... The film is a screen diary of a man in his early 30s afflicted with a life-threatening disease, a man confronting his own mortality.
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Sweet Love Remembered
1980 · 14 min
Inspired by remarks made by Freud, "Eros nowhere makes its intentions more clear than in the desire to make two things one." and by Nietzsche, "What must these people have suffered to have become this beautiful."
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Trace
1980 · 1 min
The memory of a nearly perfect evening.
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1857 (Fool's Gold)
1981 · 25 min
This film is an act of celebration ... He produces -- with light and colour, sound, stillness and movement -- the ineluctable rhythm and energy of the natural world.
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Illuminated Texts
1982 · 174 min
"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
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Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian
1985 · 201 min
Like Ezekiel's vision in the valley of the dry bones, a typos of a new beginning. In among all the feelings of loss and deprivation there occur intimations of final culbute général, of the dissolution of time, of a now that vanishes between the no long and the not yet.
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Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation
1985 · 240 min
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Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods
1988 · 268 min
"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa
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Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing
1988 · 281 min
"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa
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Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 3: The Body and the World
1988 · 276 min
"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa
New
Flesh Angels
1990 · 110 min
"A beatific vision of the imaginary landscape of paradise, inspired by the poetry of ... Blake." Pacific Cinematheque
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Newton and Me
1991 · 110 min
Newton was the greatest of all the natural magicians, learned in matters musical, theological and in Apocalyptic literature. He believed bodies were composed of "certain aetheral spirits or vapours"; one ... is the ether, "the succus nutritius of the earth, or primary substance"; the second substance disseminated through the first, is light.
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Azure Serene
1992 · 95 min
"Inspired by the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound ... Elder's latest film .. is a visually lush collage," and "ironic attempt to construct a Divine Comedy for modern times." Jim Shedden
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Exultations: In Light of the Great Giving
1993 · 90 min
The titular film of region three of Elder's Book of All the Dead
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Burying the Dead (Into the Light)
1993 · 95 min
The confrontation with death and finitude....Death animates the sense of the intimacy of life whose measureless flow is a danger to the stability of things. (RBE)
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Et Resurrectus Est
1994 · 135 min
"Behold, I show you a mystery. Not everyone shall sleep, but everyone shall be changed."
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Frequently asked questions

What order should I watch The Book of All the Dead in?

1. Breath/Light/Birth (1975), 2. She Is Away (1975), 3. Permutations and Combinations (1976), 4. Barbara is a Vision of Loveliness (1976), 5. Look! We Have Come Through! (1978), 6. The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1979), 7. Sweet Love Remembered (1980), 8. Trace (1980), 9. 1857 (Fool's Gold) (1981), 10. Illuminated Texts (1982), 11. Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 1: The Dream of the Last Historian (1985), 12. Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World, Part 2: The Sublime Calculation (1985), 13. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 1: The Fugitive Gods (1988), 14. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 2: The Lighted Clearing (1988), 15. Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time) Part 3: The Body and the World (1988), 16. Flesh Angels (1990), 17. Newton and Me (1991), 18. Azure Serene (1992), 19. Exultations: In Light of the Great Giving (1993), 20. Burying the Dead (Into the Light) (1993), 21. Et Resurrectus Est (1994).

How long does it take to watch all of The Book of All the Dead?

About 36h 56m across 21 released films.

Do any The Book of All the Dead films have post-credit scenes?

None are listed on TMDB.