Garrett Bradley (filmmaker)
Garrett Bradley is an American filmmaker and director of short films, feature films, documentaries, and television. She is known for blending cinematic genres to investigate the larger sociopolitical significance embedded within the everyday moments of her subjects' lived experience. Bradley's first feature was Below Dreams which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.The film won a special jury award at the New Orleans Film Festival and was named a "slow burn beauty" by film critic Blige Ebiri. Bradley won the directing award in the U.S. documentary competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival for her first nonfiction feature, Time, becoming the first black woman to win the award.
Biography and works
Bradley was born in New York City to abstract painters Suzanne McClelland and Peter Bradley. She studied religion at Smith College, then earned her MFA in Directing at UCLA.Bradley's recent documentary short, America, was called by Guardian film critic Simran Hans the "most original film" she saw at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for an Independent Documentary Award by the IDA. America set a new precedent as a short film in 2019 when it was given a week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music entitled "Garrett Bradley's America: A Journey Through Time", curated by Ashely Clark, and was programmed alongside influenced and inspired works as well as a retrospective of Bradley's past films. Invited speakers included Saidiya Hartman, July Dash, and Ramell Ross. The event was in partnership with New York University's "Black Portraiture: V Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future." The discussion included Racquel Gates, Associate Professor, Department of Media Culture, College of Staten Island, CUNY; Michael B. Gillespie, Associate Professor of Film at the City College of New York; and Nicole R. Fleetwood, Professor of American Studies and Art History, Rutgers University.
Bradley's first museum solo exhibition, "American Rhapsody", was curated by Rebecca Matalon at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. She has participated in two group shows, the 2019 Whitney Biennial by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley and "Bodies of Knowledge" at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Filmography
Film and television| Year | Title | Notes |
| 2014 | Below Dreams | Bradley's feature film debut at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival |
| 2015 | Cover Me | Prospect 3 Arts Biennial |
| 2016 | Like | Short |
| 2017 | Alone | Short Form Jury Award in nonfiction at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; 2017 Oscar Contender |
| 2018 | The Earth is Humming | Documentary short |
| 2019 | America | Documentary short |
| 2019 | Queen Sugar | Director of one episode, "Live in the All Along" |
| 2019 | When They See Us | Second unit director, 4 episodes |
| 2019 | A.K.A. | 2019 Whitney Biennial |
| 2019 | Power | In post-production |
| 2019 | Time | Best Director for US Documentary in Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival |
| 2020 | Untitled Naomi Osaka Docu-series | In Production |