Garrett Bradley wins Eye Art & Film Prize 2023

About Garrett Bradley

Born in New York City and based in New Orleans, Louisiana, Garrett Bradley is a US artist, educator and Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Bradley's work spans narrative, documentary and experimental modes of filmmaking to address themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice and socio-political histories within the United States.

Adopting archival material alongside newly shot footage, Bradley’s films exist simultaneously in the past, present and future, not only disrupting our perception of time, but has also been at the forefront of challenging cinematic ideas around objectivity, perspective, truth-telling and American history.

In America (2019) a multi-channel video installation, Bradley constructs a visual archive of early Black American cinema. Inspired by a 2013 survey published by the Library of Congress proposing that 70 percent of silent films made between 1912 and 1929 have been lost, as well as the discovery and restoration of what is believed to be the earliest surviving film to feature a Black cast (Lime Kiln Club Field Day, 1913), America takes shape as a series of vignettes depicting the everyday, at times, quotidian moments in American history. Shot in black and white, with a score by Trevor Mathison and Udit Duseja of the Black Audio Film Collective (1983-1998), Bradley’s film presupposes the existence of a body of cinema made by and for Black America and since lost to history.

Bradley's debut documentary feature, Time (2020), earned her the Best Director Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition category at the Sundance Film Festival, making her the first Black woman in the history of the Festival to win this award. Time, which was nominated for over 57 awards, including for an Academy Award, and won 20 times.

Eye Art & Film Prize

The Eye Prize has been presented annually since 2015 to an artist or filmmaker who is compiling an exceptional oeuvre and contributing in an extraordinary way to new developments at the intersection of visual art and film. The prize is made up of a cash sum of € 30,000, intended to facilitate the creation of new work.