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THE JOURNAL
A DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER'S BLOG
NEW YORK CHARLOTTESVILLE VALENCIA
FEATURE ESSAY
The numbers do not fully absorb. As of this writing, 1,783 cultural heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. Among them, 46 have been completely erased. The Ministry of Culture counts 346 artists and 132 media workers dead. PEN Ukraine had already reached 102 cultural figures killed by the end of 2024, and the count has not stopped. These are not collateral casualties. They are the point.
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How Much of the Body Goes Into the Clay?
Filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley reflects on photographing ceramic artist Paul Chaleff at work and what still photography reveals about the body, labor, clay, and memory.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
3 days ago2 min read
Diamonds Are Forever. So Should Justice Be.
Portrait of a Lady vanished from Jacques Goudstikker's Amsterdam gallery in 1940 and surfaced eighty years later above a sofa in Mar del Plata. A federal judge has now sent it home. Eduardo Montes-Bradley recalls a seventh-grade birthday party in the Argentina of the 1960s, and a woman who recognized a painting on somebody else's wall.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
4 days ago4 min read
Paul Chaleff, Anthony Caro: A Collaboration
I came to Paul Chaleff’s studio understanding that he and Anthony Caro had worked together. What I did not yet understand was the scope of that collaboration and the circumstances that made it possible. Perhaps now...
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
6 days ago4 min read
Finding Haesook
While filming ceramic artist Paul Chaleff in Ancram, filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley encounters Haesook Kim and reflects on memory, loss, and the limits of documentary.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Sep 44 min read
Paul Chaleff in Focus
Just arrived in Ancram, New York, where we are planning to spend at least a week documenting Paul Chaleff at work, following the craft and process of one of America’s most celebrated ceramicist-sculptors.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 311 min read
Looking for Sorolla, Finding Lam
The Hispanic Society had recently acquired his Portrait of a Boy (1927), and I stood in front of it longer than I meant to. It wasn't only the painting. It was the strange sensation of having walked out of one of my documentary film project and into another.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 302 min read
Going Vertical at St. John the Divine
I went back to St. John the Divine, this time to take the Vertical Tour. Our guide was a parishioner originally from the German-speaking part of Switzerland whose name, regrettably, I can't remember. She was knowledgeable, patient, and seemingly quite at home leading a dozen strangers up the narrow spiral staircases and into the upper reaches of one of New York’s most extraordinary landmarks.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 283 min read
A New Vision of Spain
Vision of Spain appears documentary, but every representation of a nation is also an invention, and that makes it particularly interesting to me. Sorolla chose which regions would stand for Spain, which costumes would identify them, which ceremonies mattered, which occupations deserved monumental treatment and which fragments of everyday life could carry the weight of national identity.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 276 min read
The Sound of the Lost Republic
We tend to think of pre-revolutionary Cuba through its popular music. Son, rumba, mambo, bolero, jazz: these have become inseparable from our historical imagination of the city. But another Cuba sounded at the same time, and its musical geography was remarkably international.
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Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 274 min read
A Guastavino Walk Above and Below
Yesterday’s walk was conceived as a journey beneath Rafael Guastavino’s domes and vaulted ceilings, beginning at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, continuing through Grand Central Terminal, and finally descending into the ghostly loop beneath Lower Manhattan, where trains still pass through the abandoned City Hall station.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 271 min read
Return to St. John the Divine
A minimal photo essay from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, tracing Rafael Guastavino's Valencian timbrel vaults from La Lonja to nearly 1,000 American buildings.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 252 min read
Peoria, of All Places
The Piccirilli Factor screens Oct 8, 2026, at the Peoria Riverfront Museum — the town where Lincoln's 1854 speech began the road to the memorial the Piccirilli brothers carved.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 232 min read
How America Learned to Hear Spain: Joaquín Rodrigo and the New World Imagination
How Joaquín Rodrigo shaped America’s image of Spain, from the Concierto de Aranjuez to Miles Davis, and transformed a Valencian voice into a transatlantic legacy.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 159 min read
Into the Whirlpool of History: How a Midnight Collaboration in Massa Became a Criticism of War
A Short Film: While visiting Massa for the premiere of my feature film, The Piccirilli Factor, I was invited to walk through the historic air-raid refuge (rifugio antiaereo) near Piazza Martana. Nestled deep below the Castello Malaspina, the shelter is a massive, hand-hewn empty space. Walking through it, I felt completely sucked into an eddy—a whirlpool of history.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 72 min read
The Piccirilli Factor Returns Home: A European Premiere in Massa
The Piccirilli Factor celebrates its European premiere in Massa, Italy, as the documentary begins an international tour across museums and cultural institutions.
Heritage Film Project
Aug 63 min read
The Curious Case of the Italian Missing Roadkill
Why are there so few wild animals—and almost no roadkill—in Italy? A day driving through Tuscany and Liguria becomes a humorous field expedition into Europe’s carefully curated landscape, ending with an unexpected discovery: the country’s most successful “mammal” is the Panda.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Aug 32 min read
Sorolla's Return Journey: From New York to Valencia
More than 200 works by Joaquín Sorolla will travel from New York’s Hispanic Society to Valencia. Their return reveals the cultural relationship between the two cities and introduces Valencians in New York, a documentary exploring the influence of Sorolla, Guastavino, Blasco Ibáñez and Penella on New York.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 294 min read
Guastavino and the Making of Monumental New York
Discover how Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino and his son transformed New York through revolutionary tile vaults found in Grand Central Terminal the City Hall subway station St. John the Divine and many other landmarks.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 269 min read
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