AMSTERDAM.- US artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley is the winner of the Eye Art & Film Prize 2023. Bradley receives the prize for her trailblazing work, in which she combines a personal visual style with research and social commitment. The jury were impressed by Bradley’s engagement, unique, contemporary aesthetics and adventurous attitude.

The Eye Prize will be presented to the winner on Friday 10 November in Eye Filmmuseum, during the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). eyefilm.nl/eyeprize2023.

Garrett Bradley was chosen as the prize-winner by an international jury, and receives the sum of € 30,000 and an exhibition in Eye Filmmuseum. The cash prize enables the winner to create new work, and is generously supported by Ammodo.

Jury chair Bregtje van der Haak, director of Eye Filmmuseum: “We are delighted that Garrett Bradley is the ninth winner of the Eye Art & Film Prize. Bradley has been awarded this prize for her courageous, visually compelling work, which takes on themes including racism and exclusion with exceptional energy. Her work is given concrete form in a mix of different media. Her (documentary) films and installations refer to topics including the history of Americans, the struggle for social justice and the political history of the United States, and make in-depth explorations of human emotions such as rage and sorrow."

“Garrett Bradley is a dream winner of the Eye Prize. She works at the intersection of fact and fiction and of film and visual art. She is both a passionate archive researcher and activist, and an exceptionally talented artist. In her work, she combines a personal aesthetic in the realm of cinematography with an unconventional experimental approach: her films and installations draw us in, challenge us, stir our souls and get us thinking about the world.”

Garrett Bradley

Born in New York City and based in New Orleans, Louisiana, Garrett Bradley is an 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. Bradley received her BA from Smith College and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

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 and won 20 times, including an Oscar nomination, 2020 Peabody Award and in 2023, was included as one of 50 films listed in both the The Hollywood Reporter and IndieWire’s “50 best Films of the 21st Century.”

Bradley was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2015) and in 2022, she was awarded the Arts and Letters Award for Art by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Solo and group exhibitions include both national and international festivals and institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, The Gallery of New South Wales, The TriBeCa Film Festival, Rotterdam Film festival, SXSW, Sundance Film Festival, The New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films. Recent presentations include Safe at Lisson Gallery (2022) and Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody at The Museum of contemporary Art (2022)