The UCLA Film and Television Archive showcases two recent films by UCLA alumna and New Orleans-based, independent writer-director Garrett Bradley on Friday, Aug. 28, 7:30 p.m. at the Billy Wilder Theater in UCLA’s Hammer Museum. A post-screening conversation with Bradley follows the screening.
“Below Dreams,” which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, is an impressionistic and candid portrait of three struggling young adults in New Orleans. The film was adapted from a series of interviews conducted on a Greyhound bus while Bradley traveled from New York to Louisiana.
“Cover Me,” a joint project with artist Tameka Norris, depicts the daily life of an aspiring singer, employing long takes and intense closeups to create a powerful, personal narrative. Archive programmer Paul Malcolm was struck by the film when it premiered at the 2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam: “Cover Me takes us into the subjective experience of a young, millennial artist working through various ways of being and performing in the world, both in public and private. Its thematic terrain has been the gist for countless American indie films over the last decade, but Bradley approaches it in a unique way that strips the subject down to its essences .... Together, ‘Below Dreams’ and ‘Cover Me’ clearly announce Bradley as an important, rising talent.”
Bradley earned her M.F.A. at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 2012. She is the recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award, the Lynn Weston Fellowship, the Motion Picture Association of America Award and the Mary Pickford Award. Her current project, “American Rhapsody,” offers a thoughtful engagement with film archives, technology and production to recover and reimagine a lost history of African American silent cinema.
Learn more and watch a trailer for “Below Dreams” at the Archive Blog. Also find information and purchase tickets at An Evening with Garrett Bradley.
