Cubism and futurism were related movements that vied with each other in the economy of renown. Perception, dynamism, and the dynamism of perception—these issues passed back and forth between the two. Cubism and Futurism shows how movement became, in the traditional visual arts, a central factor with the advent of the cinema: gone were the days when an artwork strived merely to lift experience out the realm of change and flow.
The cinema at this time was understood as an electric art, akin to X-rays, coloured light, and sonic energy. In this book, celebrated filmmaker and author Bruce Elder connects the dynamism that the cinema made an essential feature of the new artwork to the new science of electromagnetism. Cubism is a movement on the cusp of the transition from the world of standardized Cartesian coordinates and interchangeable machine parts to a Galvanic world of continuities and flows. In contrast, futurism embraced completely the emerging electromagnetic view of reality.
Cubism and Futurism shows that the notion of energy made central to the new artwork by the cinema assumed a spiritual dimension, as the cinema itself came to be seen as a pneumatic machine.

R. Bruce Elder is a filmmaker, critic, and teacher (and former Program Director) in the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University. His film work has been screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Millennium Film Workshop, Berlin’s Kino Arsenal, Paris’ Centre Pompidou, the San Francisco Cinematheque, Atlanta’s High Museum, Los Angeles’ Film Forum, Stadtfilmmuseum München, and Hamburg’s Kino Metropolis. Retrospectives of his work have been presented by Anthology Film Archives (NY), the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cinématheque Québecoise, Il Festival Senzatitolo (Trento), Images Film and Video Festival (Toronto). Cinematheque Ontario has said this about him: “R. Bruce Elder is not only one of Canada’s foremost experimental filmmakers, he’s one of our greatest artists, thinkers, critics, and filmmakers, period.” Harmony & Dissent, his previous book on film and avant-garde art movements, was awarded the Robert Motherwell Book Prize, shortlisted for the Raymond Kilbansky Prize, and named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2010. His next book entitled DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect is forthcoming from WLU Press.

R. Bruce Elder's profile page

This volume establishes R. Bruce Elder’s writing as belonging among works of rare analytical depth, and probably unique within the panorama of film theorists. I know of no cineaste more attentive to esthetical and philosophical issues. The tissues of his thought processes manifest constantly in the deluge of original commentary, opening innovative avenues of meaning. Reading this volume is like entering into a fascinating territory of futurist and cubist poetics, with the view of a boundless horizon. Elder, in a systematic way, gathers the boundaries of various theoretical matrixes and melts them to enrich the architecture of cinematographic thinking.”

Antonio Bisaccia, Director, “Mario Sironi” Academy of Fine Arts; Sassari, Italy, Antonio Bisaccia