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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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Nothing Is Ever Enough
Notes on "Papá Iván," a film by María Inés Roqué. México, 2000. Argentina's Dirty Little War This morning I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with a woman I had never met, talking about things I have carried for fifty years. Her name is María Inés Roqué. She makes documentary films; so do I. She left Argentina around the time I did. Somewhere in that hour we discovered we have many friends in common. It should not have surprised either of us: the country we left
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Jul 411 min read
Romanian New Wave Film: A fost sau n-a fost? Released in the US as 12:08 East of Bucharest
A critical review of Corneliu Porumboiu's debut feature — a film about collective memory, the Romanian Revolution, and the provincial town that may or may not have been part of it.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Apr 214 min read
The Impossible Film
A filmmaker's response to Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace — the Soviet epic restored by Criterion and available now in its full four-part, seven-hour form. On spectacle, chaos, Pierre Bezukhov, and why nothing in the history of cinema quite compares.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Apr 184 min read
Andante: A Musician's Footsteps — The Life and Work of Alberto Soriano.
Review: Andante: Los pasos de un músico. Vida y obra de Alberto Soriano. By Mireya Soriano Editorial Milenio. Spain, 2021.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Apr 124 min read
Jota Urondo, un cocinero impertinente. A Film by Mariana Erijimovich and Juan Villegas.
Aged beef. Kimchi. Gnocchi with chitterlings. The menu at Urondo Bar does not court trends, nor does it apologize for its stubbornness. It simply is — rooted, specific, unapologetically itself. And that, it turns out, is a political act.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Apr 122 min read
Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn Come Alive in a New Production Off-Broadway.
Fanny: A Fantasy in G, Tim McGillicuddy’s new play presented by Off-Brand Opera at the Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York, tells the story of Fanny Mendelssohn — composer, woman, Jew, sister of Felix — and her lifelong struggle to claim her voice in a world not yet prepared to welcome it. McGillicuddy neither sensationalizes nor reaches for false modern parallels. He simply shows what happened, in a parlor, at a piano, over the course of a life. That discipline is the play’s gr
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Apr 87 min read
The Rise and Fall of Che Guevara
This documentary includes extraordinary archival footage as well as original photographs taken by Che himself. So far, it is the only documentary that brings the ceremony of the return of Che’s remains to Santa Clara, the government ceremony, as well as the pouring of people who gave homage to this twentieth-century heroic figure. This documentary is a must-see for anyone interested in labor studies, history, and cultural studies of Latin America.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Nov 17, 20252 min read
Rediscovering George Bristow
Preston, professor emerita at the College of William & Mary, makes use of the Bristow Collection at the New York Public Library, including letters, photographs, and other documents acquired from the composer's descendants. These sources help to present Bristow as a working musician in 19th-century New York: a violinist in orchestras, a church organist and choir director, a private and public school teacher, and a composer across multiple genres.
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Nov 8, 20252 min read
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