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THE JOURNAL
A DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER'S BLOG
NEW YORK CHARLOTTESVILLE VALENCIA
The Journal — A Documentary Filmmaker’s Blog by Eduardo Montes-Bradley
THE GUASTAVINO EFFECT
Genius at Work on Ellis Island | For nearly fifty years I've managed to stay away from two of New York’s famous landmarks: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I'm not attracted to seeing a place simply because one is supposed to see it. I'm more interested in scouting a location, when the visit has a purpose and the building has something I need to understand. This time I had a purpose: Rafael Guastavino.
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Joaquín Sorolla in Granada
On February 7, 1917, Joaquín Sorolla wrote from Granada to his wife, Clotilde, in Madrid, as he did almost every other day while he travelled across Spain. These were the years of Vision of Spain, the commission Archer Huntington had given him for the Hispanic Society of America in New York. His letters, now kept at the Museo Sorolla in Madrid, let us follow those journeys day by day, often against the clock.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
5 days ago3 min read
The Twelve Labours of Hercules at Llíria and a new Documentary on New York
A Roman mosaic discovered beneath a garden in Llíria opens a window onto the many cultural layers inherited by modern Valencia.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Sep 293 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 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
The Fish, the Angel, and the Price of Sacrifice: Blasco Ibáñez and Sorolla
From a rainy Boston cemetery where Chadwick turned a Daniel Chester French sculpture into a symphony, Eduardo Montes-Bradley reflects on translation between the arts — and on Blasco Ibáñez and Sorolla, two friends from Valencia whose page and canvas gave us the true price of fish.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 253 min read
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: The Valencian Who Swept New York Off Its Feet
Before Valentino and before Garbo, a writer made in Valencia wrote the stories that launched them. Eduardo Montes-Bradley on Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) — the man behind The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, friend of Sorolla and Benlliure, who conquered New York in 1919 and helped invent modern mass-media fame.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 246 min read
Ignacio Zuloaga: The Other Face of the Spanish Modernist Coin
Writing from Valencia, Eduardo Montes-Bradley finds Zuloaga's canvases in the Museo de Bellas Artes and, from Sorolla's dark twin to the red and black roosters of El gallo negro, traces the two Spains — from the crack of 1898 to the Civil War songs of Republican refugees in Buenos Aires.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 244 min read
The Beginnings of Modernity in Valencia
Writing from Valencia, Eduardo Montes-Bradley traces the beginnings of modernity in Valencian art — from Francisco Domingo Marqués to Joaquín Sorolla's international triumph — the silver age that shaped Spanish painting into the twentieth century.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 222 min read
Searching for Joaquín Rodrigo in Valencia
A drive down the Mediterranean coast to Cullera, and a meeting with Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of Joaquín Rodrigo — the blind composer who wrote every note of his life's work in Braille. A house of seven-step staircases, a family workshop, and the foundation that gathered a scattered archive under one roof.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 183 min read
City of Memory, City of Forgetting: Valencia in Layers
Nanjing accumulated its past, layer upon layer. Valencia did something stranger — it kept some layers and erased others. Reading a city through what remains, and what was made to disappear.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 144 min read
The River That Became a Garden
A flood nearly killed a city. What grew from the wound is a lesson in what citizens can demand from the places they live.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 134 min read
Coming Home: "The Piccirilli Factor" Premieres in Massa
Eduardo Montes-Bradley's documentary The Piccirilli Factor: Italian Sculptors and the City Beautiful Movement will have its European premiere on August 4, 2026, in the gardens of Villa Rinchiostra in Massa, Italy — birthplace of the Piccirilli brothers, the carvers behind the Lincoln Memorial and America's most iconic monuments. Organized by the Comune di Massa and the Biblioteca Civica Stefano Giampaoli.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 132 min read
How Many Bulls Must Be Sacrificed Before the Myth Dies?
A meditation on Europa, bullfighting, Bous a la Mar, and the possibility that some myths survive because they are still being performed.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jun 147 min read
Notes from the The Lost Republic
A find from the research desk of The Lost Republic: a Havana inventory listing a Thorvaldsen, a Wappers, a Columbus given by Columbus's own heir — and what these works tell us about the artistic world into which the Cuban Republic was born.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 234 min read
Don Quixote: A Spanglish Version for el barrio
Years ago Ilan Stavans sent me the most sacred sentence in Spanish, rewritten in Spanglish. Moving to Spain now, I still can't decide whether it's desecration or birth. After Bad Bunny's Super Bowl, was Stavans a precursor?
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 206 min read
Feminism and the Lebanese Phalange. The Two Battles of Jocelyne Khoueiri
From the demarcation lines of Beirut to the foot of a Pope — Jocelyne Khoueiri’s life passed through two battles, and the truth she chose at the end.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 183 min read
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