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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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The Festival Run Is Not the Finish Line; it's Part of the Distribution Strategy.
Getting accepted is only half the journey. What turns a festival screening into lasting momentum is the story you tell around it — before, during, and after.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
23 hours ago2 min read
Samba: The Ancestral Heartbeat of Brazil
An evolving journey through memory, music, race, faith, and Carnival, told by the voices of the men and women who shaped the story of samba in Samba on Your Feet.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
6 days ago7 min read
Héctor Tizón: The Journey as Destiny
A documentary portrait of Argentine novelist Héctor Tizón, filmed entirely in the province of Jujuy, exploring migration, cultural memory, language, and the mythic power of the journey in Northern Argentine literature.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jun 118 min read
Medium Format: Intimacy and Pleasure: Size Matters.
I use medium format photography to calm my anxiety. To feel at ease. To walk around the neighborhood without a destination. And to experience what feels like an ancient sensation — of being one with the image.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jun 23 min read
The Art of Illuminating Wha's No Longer There
In 1984 Enrique Shore was the photographer of Argentina's CONADEP, walking through the cells and torture chambers to make the images that became evidence against the juntas. Four decades on, he photographs birds in flight. A tribute to a master of capturing what escapes.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 293 min read
Who Was Playing the Harmonica at Battle of Iwo Jima.
Legend has it that veterans of the Pacific campaigns remember hearing a harmonica in the dark between landings — but nobody ever knew who was playing it. This documentary is the story of how we found him: William J. Eckert, Marine, Hamburg-born, Iwo Jima veteran, harmonica in his pocket through all of it.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 277 min read
Giacomo Puccini came from a family that fortune consistently favored. His younger brother Michele was the one exception — he crossed to South America first, fell to yellow fever, and never came home.
Giacomo Puccini’s younger brother Michele died unknown in Rio in 1891, after a duel and a flight from Jujuy. The warning that kept Giacomo in Italy reached me through Héctor Tizón — a Jujuy judge — in a film I directed twenty-five years ago.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 252 min read
I've Seen This Movie Before
This morning Joseph Horowitz sent me an article in The New York Times about who actually does a dictatorship's dirty work — not fanatics, but the mediocre and the passed-over. I have already seen this movie. I filmed its first act, on Super 8, in the streets of Buenos Aires in 1974.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 235 min read
Soriano: el documental que el tiempo convirtió en un archivo de voces
Durante años me preguntaron dónde se podía ver. Hoy vuelve, completa, mi primer documental sobre un escritor: Soriano, el retrato del Gordo que la academia desdeñó y los lectores amaron. Una película que el tiempo convirtió en el archivo de toda una generación.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 224 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
Carola Saavedra: Between Berlin and a Place Named Peixoto — A Documentary by Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Carola Saavedra: Between Berlin and a Place Named Peixoto is an award-winning Heritage Film Project production directed by Eduardo Montes-Bradley, part of his ongoing series of documentary essays on contemporary authors.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
May 59 min read
A Fresh Look Into Black Fiddlers
Black Fiddlers, is a documentary that for the first time will tell the story of early American Black fiddlers.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jun 25, 20214 min read
THE ARCHIVES | Interesa un incisivo documental sobre Jorge Luis Borges.
Eduardo Montes Bradley, el mismo de «Soriano», elude hacer una obra definitiva. Lo que ha querido hacer, y lo consigue, es una obra incisiva, lo cual es mucho más interesante. Vale la pena.
Heritage Film Project
Sep 14, 20002 min read
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