Illuminated Texts1982

"A very demanding work of great complexity and rigor, ILLUMINATED TEXTS presents itself as a great debate between nature and technology, unity and dissolution, the divine and demonic, and irrecoverable past and the terrible velocity of time. Following on Elder's previous film, the autobiographical ART OF WORLDLY WISDOM, and the structural essay in history, 1857: FOOL's GOLD, ILLUMINATED TEXTS reenacts this time on a single site, both the task of constructing a self and the progression of historical agony. Although prolix in his use of texts–acted one, superimposed on the image, spoken in voiceovers and proliferate in the range of his imagery, Elder has structured ILLUMINATED TEXTS classically as inexorable movement from paradise to apocalypse, of in the formal terms, the film uses from plenitude to fragmentation. It is a sign of Elder's continuing commitment to a romantic sensibility making all his movies that the most horrific section of ILLUMINATED TEXTS, its apocalyptic conclusion is also the most stunning 45 minutes Elder has so far committed to film." –Bart Testa, Canadian Images, 1983