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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
21 hours ago2 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
3 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
5 days ago4 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
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
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
Universo Montes-Bradley: Conversaciones con Julia Montesoro
Ya está disponible la primera temporada de Universo Montes-Bradley: Conversaciones con Julia Montesoro
Heritage Film Project
Jul 264 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
Lighter Than Air: A Lecture in Barcelona
On July 21, 2026, Eduardo Montes-Bradley delivers a lecture at the Consulate General of Argentina in Barcelona marking the 110th anniversary of the first crossing of the Andes by hydrogen balloon, achieved in 1916 by Eduardo Bradley and Ángel María Zuloaga.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 192 min read
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