Garrett Bradley (filmmaker)

Last updated

Garrett Bradley
Garrett Bradley From Eye Film museum.png
Born1986 (age 37–38)
New York City, U.S.
Education Smith College, UCLA
OccupationFilmmaker
Years active2014–present
Notable workAlone; America; Time
Parent(s) Peter Bradley
Suzanne McClelland
Awards American Academy of Arts and Letters: Art, Arts and Letters Awards (2022); Sundance Film Festival; Best Director, US Documentary Competition (2020); Prix de Rome (2019); Creative Capital Grantee (2019)

Garrett Bradley (born 1986) is an American filmmaker and director of short films, feature films, documentaries, and television. She is known for blending cinematic genres to explore the larger sociopolitical significance of the everyday moments of her subjects' lived experience.

Contents

Early life and education

Bradley was born in New York City in 1986 [1] to abstract painters Suzanne McClelland and Peter Bradley. [2] Her parents divorced when she was two years old. [3] At sixteen, Bradley made her first film, which involved her interviewing each of her parents about art, the other parent, and why they got a divorce. [2] For Bradley, this first film project was an opportunity to ask her parents questions that she "didn't feel safe asking without a camera." [4] She titled the film Be-Bop Fidelity and submitted it to the Bridge Film Festival run by her high school, the Brooklyn Friends School; there she won her first film award. [5] [6]

Bradley studied religion at Smith College, graduating in 2007, then earned her MFA in Directing at UCLA in 2012. [3] [7] She is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. [1] Bradley's professional work began in college as a concert photographer for Central Park's SummerStage.[ citation needed ]

Career

Her debut feature-length film, Below Dreams, premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Festival and followed the lives of three people in reverse migration from north to south, in pursuit of a fresh start. Bradley was noted for her lyrical, hybridized filmmaking style described by New York Magazine's Bilge Ebiri as “a slow-burn beauty...improvisatory, glancing, gorgeous and as much about the textured quality and imagery as it is about character development or class conflict.” [8] Below Dreams was cast almost entirely from Craigslist; an approach Bradley took after having no luck working with traditional casting directors in New Orleans. [9] Many of the people depicted in the film, re-appear in later works. [ citation needed ]

In 2017, Bradley co-founded Creative Council, an artist-led after-school program which was aimed at developing strong college portfolios and applications for students attending public high schools in New Orleans. Creative Council was supported by The New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC). [10]

Notable Works

Alone

Bradley’s 13-minute documentary film Alone (2017), like her feature documentary film, Time, focuses on incarceration in the United States from what Bradley has described as a "distinctly Black southern, feminist perspective." [11] The short features Aloné Watts, a young woman whose boyfriend (a subject of Bradley's 2014 Below Dreams) is incarcerated. The film depicts Watts' everyday life as she considers her future with her boyfriend; Fox Rich, protagonist of Time, appears in the short. [12] Alone premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded the Short Form Jury Award in nonfiction and was released by the New York Times OpDocs. [12] In 2021, Alone was included in Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, an exhibition originally conceived by Okwui Enwezor for the New Museum. [13]

America

Bradley's 2019 project, America, is both a single channel film and multi-channel installation - composed of two distinct edits. America was first installed at the New Orleans Museum of Art and went on to be included in Bradley's first touring solo exhibition, Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, curated by Rebecca Matalon. [14] American Rhapsody also traveled to The Momentary, August Wilson African American Cultural Center, [15] and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. [16] Projects: Garrett Bradley opened November 21, 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art, and was organized by Thelma Golden and Legacy Russell. The exhibition was part of a multiyear partnership between The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1. Roberta Smith of The New York Times wrote of the show “Bradley’s ambitious effort adds new energy to both Post-Minimalism and Pictures Generation appropriation art….Punctuated by the high-spirits and faster speed of “Field Day,” Bradley’s “America sets us in motion, circling the screens, exploring the possible identities, stories and symbols of its shifting stories and their regular moments of aural and filmic lyricism. Not to mention some perceptual overload: Does the piece use two, three or four channels? You think the images proceed in matched pairs — especially since only two projectors are visible — but then suddenly, they don’t. In every way, this work is a constant discovery.” [17]

The short film of the same title was called by Observer film critic Simran Hans the "most original film" she saw at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, [18] was nominated for an Independent Documentary Award by the International Documentary Association and released in 2020 by Field of Vision and The Criterion Channel. America set a new precedent as a short film in 2019 when it was given a week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, under the title Garrett Bradley's America: A Journey Through Time. [19] It was programmed alongside influenced and inspired works as well as a retrospective of Bradley's past films. Invited speakers included Saidiya Hartman, Julie Dash, and RaMell Ross. The event was in partnership with New York University's "Black Portraiture: V Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future.” In The New York Review of Books, the author Maya Binyam wrote “Since the release of America, Bradley has joined the ranks of archivist-artist, figures whose mission is often said by critics and curators to be a corrective to the archive’s irredeemable deficiencies. The narratives that make up history have obvious limitations: they leave people out. Art, on the other hand, is believed by practically everyone, except for those who actually make it, to be boundless. And so creative people are tasked with doing what the entrenched institutions that narrate and preserve history supposedly cannot: facilitate redress. Bradley’s work undercuts that expectation.” [20]

Time

In 2020, Bradley presented her debut feature-length documentary, Time, which was nominated for over 57 awards and twenty wins including an Academy Award nomination, 2020 Peabody Award, and Best Director Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.[ citation needed ] Her debut feature was also included in Time Magazine’s “25 Defining Works of the Black Renaissance,” [21] Barack Obama’s 2020 favorite film list, and The Hollywood Reporter’s “Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)” list. [22]

Other Works

In 2021, Netflix released Naomi Osaka , a three-part miniseries directed by Bradley. The series follows professional tennis player Naomi Osaka over a two-year period during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. [23] Filming took place throughout America, Japan, Haiti and Australia. During filming Bradley gave Osaka a camcorder to film her own footage also used throughout the series. It is a look inside the life of a professional athlete trying to navigate the pressures of being a global superstar. [ citation needed ]

In 2022, Bradley had her inaugural exhibition with Lisson Gallery. Safe, is the second in a trilogy which includes AKA. These short films explore the nuanced overlap between women’s interior and exterior lives. [24] Also, in 2022, Bradley and artist Arthur Jafa, collaborated on a split screen film installation a Negro, a Lim-o, which was commissioned for MoMA's exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. The piece is derived from both artist's personal relationship to "JAM" and uses "JAM" archival material, conversations, and original footage. [25]

Solo exhibitions

2023
2022
2021
2019

Group exhibitions

2022
2021
2020
2019

Filmography

Film and television

YearTitleNotes
2014Below Dreams [28] Bradley's feature film debut at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival [29]
2015Cover Me [30] Prospect 3 Arts Biennial
2016Like [31] Short
2017Alone [32] Short Form Jury Award in nonfiction at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; 2017 Oscar Contender (Shortlist)
2017Queen Sugar [33] Director of one episode, "Live in the All Along" [34]
2018The Earth is Humming [35] Documentary short
2019America [36] Documentary short [37]
2019 When They See Us Second unit director, 4 episodes
2019A.K.A.Video Installation at the 2019 Whitney Biennial [38]
2020 Time Best Director for US Documentary in Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Nominated for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
2021 Naomi Osaka Purchased by Netflix

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Greenfield-Sanders</span> American filmmaker and photographer (born 1952)

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format.

Christine Sciulli is a New York-based video installation/intervention artist. Her works have been seen on the street, in New York area galleries and institutions. Exhibitions include The Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Florida and New York’s Islip Art Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisson Gallery</span>

Lisson Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in London and New York, founded by Nicholas Logsdail in 1967. The gallery represents over 50 artists such as Art & Language, Ryan Gander, Carmen Herrera, Richard Long, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Jonathan Monk, Julian Opie, Richard Wentworth, Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon and Ai Weiwei.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Greenfield</span> American photographer and filmmaker

Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published photographic monographs, directed documentary features and series, produced traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swoon (artist)</span> American graffiti artist

Caledonia Curry, whose work appears under the name Swoon, is an American contemporary artist who works with printmaking, sculpture, and stop-motion animation to create immersive installations, community-based projects and public artworks. She is best known as one of the first women street artists to gain international recognition. Her work centers the transformative capacity of art as a catalyst for healing within communities experiencing crisis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiffany Shlain</span> American filmmaker and author (1970)

Tiffany Shlain is an American filmmaker, artist, and author. Described by the public radio program On Being as "an internet pioneer", Shlain is the co-founder of the Webby Awards and the founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Akomfrah</span> British artist, filmmaker, curator (born 1957)

Sir John Akomfrah is a Ghanaian-born British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent, whose "commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in all his films".

Jacqueline Reem Salloum is an artist and filmmaker of Palestinian and Syrian descent. Her multi-media based artwork focuses on documenting histories and memories of people, including her family, that have been fragmented by displacement and exile. Salloum’s film work includes experimental video pieces like Planet of the Arabs, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. She directed the award winning feature documentary on the Palestinian Hip Hop scene, Slingshot Hip Hop, which premiered at the Sundance film festival. Salloum’s art and video work have been exhibited in solo and group shows in the US and internationally including, Mori Art Museum, Japan; Reina Sofia, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Palazzo Papesse Centre for Contemporary Art, Sienna, Italy, Wallspace Gallery, New York and Void Gallery, Ireland as well as film festivals; IDFA, New Directors New Films, Tiff kids, DoxBox Syria and Beirut International Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmen Herrera</span> Cuban-American painter and visual artist (1915–2022)

Carmen Herrera was a Cuban-born American abstract, minimalist visual artist and painter. She was born in Havana and lived in New York City from the mid-1950s. Herrera's abstract works brought her international recognition late in life.

Cheryl Dunn is an American documentary filmmaker and photographer. She has made two feature films, Everybody Street (2013) and Moments Like This Never Last (2020). She has had three books of photographs published: Bicycle Gangs of New York (2005), Some Kinda Vocation (2007) and Festivals are Good (2015).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Dweck</span> American visual artist and filmmaker

Michael Dweck is an American visual artist and filmmaker. Best known for his narrative photography, Dweck's work "explores ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation in endangered societal enclaves." In 2003, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at Sotheby's, and in 2012, he was the first American photographer to exhibit his work in Cuba since the beginning of the United States embargo in 1960. He lives and works in New York City and in Montauk, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dream Hampton</span> American filmmaker and producer

dream hampton is an American filmmaker, producer, and writer. Her work includes the 2019 Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which she executive produced, and the 2012 An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, on which she served as co-executive producer. She co-wrote Jay-Z's 2010 memoir Decoded.

Channa Horwitz was a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, United States. She is recognized for the logically derived compositions created over her five-decade career. Her visually complex, systematic works are generally structured around linear progressions using the number eight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Prager</span> American photographer and filmmaker

Alex Prager is an American artist, director, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles.

Nina Rosenblum is an American documentary film and television producer and director and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. Italian Fotoleggendo magazine said Rosenblum “is known in the United States as one of the most important directors of the investigative documentary”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davidson Garrett</span> American poet


Davidson Garrett, also known as King Lear of the Taxi, is an American poet and actor living in New York City, New York. He drove a New York City yellow taxi cab from 1978 until 2018 to supplement his acting and writing career. Garrett has authored six books of poetry, and has been published in many literary magazines, and poetry journals.

<i>Hale County This Morning, This Evening</i> 2018 American film

Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia L. Montgomery</span> American visual artist

Virginia L. Montgomery, also known as VLM, is an American multimedia artist working in video art, sound art, sculpture, performance, and illustration. She has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe at museums, galleries, and film festivals. Her artwork is known for its surrealist qualities, material experimentation, and thematic blending of science, mysticism, metaphysics, and 21st century feminist autobiography.

<i>Time</i> (2020 film) 2020 American film

Time is a 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson and her fight for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.

<i>Naomi Osaka</i> (TV series) American documentary

Naomi Osaka is an American documentary television miniseries directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows the life of professional tennis player Naomi Osaka over the course of two years. It consists of three episodes, and premiered on July 16, 2021, on Netflix.

References

  1. 1 2 "Garrett Bradley | Artists". Lisson Gallery. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  2. 1 2 "There's No Time Like the Present—or the Past—in Garrett Bradley's Mesmerizing Films". ELLE. October 15, 2020. Retrieved July 23, 2023.
  3. 1 2 Brennan, Matt (April 22, 2015). "Garrett Bradley on Millennials, Making Films as a Woman of Color, and New Orleans-Set Debut 'Below Dreams'". IndieWire. Retrieved July 23, 2023.
  4. ↑ Muhammad, Ismail (October 6, 2020). "A Filmmaker Who Sees Prison Life With Love and Complexity". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved July 24, 2023.
  5. ↑ July, Beandrea (October 16, 2020). "'Time' Director Garrett Bradley on the Importance of Creative Community and Confronting the Idea of the Auteur - sundance.org" . Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  6. ↑ "Brooklyn Friends School | Let Your Films Speak: The Bridge Film Festival,15 Years Young". March 27, 2014. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  7. ↑ Sethi, Simran (April 6, 2022). "The Word is 'Love'". Smith College Grecourt Gate. Retrieved September 6, 2023.
  8. ↑ Ebiri, Bilge; York, a film critic for New; Vulture (April 15, 2014). "16 of the Best Films Playing at This Year's Tribeca Film Festival - Slideshow". Vulture. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  9. ↑ Murphy, Mekado (April 17, 2014). "Interview: Garrett Bradley on 'Below Dreams'". ArtsBeat. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Garrett Bradley - Sundance Collab". collab.sundance.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  11. ↑ Jalinous, Kaveh. "Garrett Bradley On Her New Documentary, "Time"". www.undertheradarmag.com. Retrieved March 28, 2024.
  12. 1 2 Biswas, Allie (September 28, 2022). "Garrett Bradley's Cinema Takes a Leap of Faith". Frieze. No. 230. ISSN   0962-0672 . Retrieved March 28, 2024.
  13. 1 2 "Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America". www.newmuseum.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  14. ↑ "Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody". Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  15. ↑ "Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody". The August Wilson African American Cultural Center. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  16. ↑ "Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody". www.moca.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  17. ↑ Smith, Roberta (March 11, 2021). "Garrett Bradley Reminds Us That Black Joy Always Existed". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  18. ↑ Hans, Simran (February 3, 2019). "Souvenirs, secrets and Springsteen: the best of Sundance 2019". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  19. ↑ "Garrett Bradley's America: A Journey Through Race and Time". BAM.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  20. ↑ Binyam, Maya (February 13, 2023). "Hiding in Plain Sight | Maya Binyam". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  21. ↑ "The 25 Defining Works of the Black Renaissance". Time. February 4, 2021. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  22. ↑ Frosch, Jon; Rooney, David; Linden, Sheri; Gyarkye, Lovia; Felperin, Leslie; Mintzer, Jordan (April 6, 2023). "Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  23. ↑ Kaufman, Amy (July 19, 2021). "Why press-averse Naomi Osaka agreed to let Netflix make a docuseries about her life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 28, 2024.
  24. 1 2 "Garrett Bradley: Safe | Exhibitions". Lisson Gallery. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  25. 1 2 "VIA Art Fund | Garrett Bradley and Arthur Jafa: a Negro, a Lim-o (2022)". VIA Art Fund. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  26. ↑ "Coma Gallery exhibition". Archived from the original on February 24, 2024. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  27. ↑ "Toni Morrison's Black Book". David Zwirner. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
  28. ↑ "Below Dreams". April 18, 2014 – via IMDb.
  29. ↑ "5 Questions for Below Dreams Director Garrett Bradley". Filmmaker Magazine. April 22, 2014.
  30. ↑ "Cover Me" – via IMDb.
  31. ↑ "Like". March 12, 2016 – via IMDb.
  32. ↑ Bradley, Garrett (February 14, 2017). "Video: Opinion | Alone". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  33. ↑ "Queen Sugar". September 6, 2016 – via IMDb.
  34. ↑ "Live in the All Along". October 18, 2017 – via IMDb.
  35. ↑ "The Earth is Humming" – via IMDb.
  36. ↑ "America". January 26, 2019 – via IMDb.
  37. ↑ "Souvenirs, secrets and Springsteen: the best of Sundance 2019". the Guardian. February 3, 2019.
  38. ↑ "Whitney Biennial 2019". whitney.org.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.