Eduardo Montes-Bradley

Infobox Writer
name = Eduardo Montes-Bradley

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image_size = 200px
caption = Portrait, 2008
birthdate = birth date and age|1960|7|9
birthplace = Argentina
pseudonym = Carlos María Ocantos, Diana Hunter, Rita Clavel, Ma. Laura del Río, Mimí Derba, Emma Padilla, Cándida Beltrán, Lupe Vélez, Ana Lobos.
spouse = Soledad Liendo
children = Thomas Benhamin, William
relatives = Ricardo Ernesto Montes i Bradley
occupation = Writer, Filmmaker
nationality = USA
website =http://www.patagoniafilmgroup.com

Eduardo Montes-Bradley is an American writer-filmmaker born in Argentina on July 9, 1960. He’s best know for his documentary work on Latin American writers and for his controversial and often politically incorrect take on politics. Montes-Bradley has produced, directed, written or otherwise engaged in over forty films. He authored the yet most complete biographical research essay on Julio Cortázar and hundreds of articles on diverse subjects: Jorge Luis Borges, Evo Morales, Dean Reed, Potemkin, Osvaldo Soriano, Che Guevara and Eva Perón.

Early life

Montes-Bradley was born in Córdoba, Argentina the son of Sara Kaplan, a piano teacher, and Nelson Montes-Bradley. The family relocated almost immediately to Rosario. Three years later they will pack again, this time the destination was Buenos Aires. Montes-Bradley grew up in the capital city of Argentina surrounded by musicians, poets, composers and artists associated with Discos Qualiton, the record label his father co-funded in the early 60´s. He attended public school, was brought up agnostic and atheist in a socialist environment favored by his parents. In 1973 EM-B enters High School in a highly politicized time in Argentina. The country was undergoing one of it´s most turbulent periods in recent history. Juan Domingo Peron was to return that year from exile in Madrid where he lived with his wife Isabelita under the protection of General Francisco Franco; and the socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody military coup in Chile lead by Augusto Pinochet. Montes-Bradley, like many other high school students at the time, joined a political party becoming a full time activist. Three years later, General Jorge Rafael Videla ousted Peron´s widow inaugurating an era of terror which resulted in the death of thousands and thousands more went into exile. Montes-Bradley will frequently recall 1973 as the happiest year of his life: "Not because of anything that I might have believed on, which I probably don´t believe in now, but because of the extraordinary experience of living in a Home full of music and poetry within a country at the brink of Civil War."

Life In America

Shortly after the military coup of 1976 -which overthrew the reckless government of Isabel Peron - Montes-Bradley migrated to the United States taking up residence in New York City. In the late seventies he worked as a journalist for The Hollywood Reporter and El Heraldo del Cine, trade publications in the film industry. His first contribution to film can be traced to Margareta Vinterheden´s "Man maste ju leva", Sweden, 1978. During the same period (late seventies early eighties) Montes-Bradley worked in a few propaganda documentaries with the Sandinistas and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) from El Salvador. In 1984, after the fallout of his first marriage, he moved to California and started his own publication: "The Entertainment Herald", a bilingual trade magazine on film. "The Entertainment Herald" was financially backed with advertising from Cannon Films of Menahem Golan and his partner Yoram Globus. "The Entertainment Herald" was published for two consecutive years in the mid-eighties. By 1986, EM-B was working as a Director of International Sales for Filmtrust Motion Pictures, a distribution company based in Los Angeles, California. In 1989 he teamed-up with Spanish producer Javier Gracia to write, produce and direct at least two thrillers that gained worldwide distribution through Columbia Tri-Star. In 1995 Montes-Bradley married the leading-lady of his third and last fiction movie. Since then, Montes-Bradley has produced written and directed over fifty documentaries on Latin American arts and culture, many under heteronyms based on fictitious characters such as Diana Hunter, the blind director-lady who "one day went deep into to the forest and was forever lost". The actual number of pen-names used by Montes-Bradley is uncertain but frequent and constant in his work as a filmmaker and a writer. Eduardo Montes-Bradley is married to producer Soledad Liendo.

quote
Docs are safer than fiction, the chances I'll end up married to the lead-actress are very slim considering most of my subjects are dead or about to join St. Peter.
EM-B, "On Marriage and Film", Toulouse, 2005.

Published work

Filmography

# "Evita", Witter, Producer, Director, Editor. Patagonia Film Group, USA, 2007. "Evita", is documentary on Eva Duarte, perhaps the most influential woman in the history of Latin America. Evita, illegitimate child without social or economic standing, was determined to make it big in the world of entertainment. Her love affair with a rising political star (Juan Domingo Peron) transformed her into a vital part of the Dictator’s plans to seduce a nation. The charming Evita became a skilled public speaker that fitted perfectly with politics in Argentina. Just imagine Marilyn Monroe with the charisma of Princess Diana, elevated by Goebels’ propaganda machine into the indisputable Spiritual Leader of the Nation. The documentary appears fair, perhaps the first biography on the subject that strives to be balanced.
# "Deira", Witter, Producer, Director, Editor. EMB Entertainment, Corp, Argentina, 2007. Deira, a biographical documentary on Ernesto Deira. The film was screened during the first retrospective exhibition of Ernesto Deira’s work at the National Art Gallery, MNBA (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), twenty years after the painter's death. It includes some 8mm camera footage of the artist taken during his visit to Belgium on occasion of a first major exhibition of his work in Europe. "Deira" also features interviews with Olga Galperin and Luis Felipe Noé amongst others.
# "Che: Rise & Fall", Witter, producer, director, editor. Patagonia Film Group, USA, 2006. "CHE: Rise and Fall", follows on the trials and tribulations of Ernesto Guevara in the words of old friends and comrades-in-arms. The film unveils a different Che Guevara, not so divine as the one often portrayed. Marcelo Schapces shot the bulk of this film in Cuba for his own documentary: "Che, a man of this world" (1998). The purpose of Schapces at the time was to document the moment in which the remains of Che Guevara were being airlifted from Vallegrande, a one horse town in Bolivia, thirty years after his execution, to be flow to Santa Clara, Cuba, his final resting place. The film includes the likeness and words of Dr. Alberto Granados, Che’s motorcycle companion and three surviving members of Guevara’s Iron Guard. The film is divided in three four main chapter: Infancy, Cuba, Congo and Bolivia.
# "El gran simulador" (The Great Pretender), Witter, producer, director, editor. Verbum, Argentina, 2006. "El gran simulador" begins with Eduardo Montes-Bradley in a quest to find Nahuel Maciel, a man who fifteen years before fooled everyone pretending to be a Native American from the Mapuche Nation in Patagonia. Disguised as the chief Nahuel sold interviews to Gabriel García Márquez, Umberto Ecco, Mario Vargas Llosa and more to El Cronista Comercial, a major newspaper in Argentina. The literary sham went even farther when Nahuel published a book with a bogus interview to the Colombian Nobel Prize of Literature preceded by a foreword by Uruguayan legend Eduardo Galeano. Eduardo Montes-Bradley finds Nahuel in Gualeguaychú, some 300 miles from Buenos Aires working close to the leadership of a group of environmentalists battling a paper-mill plant in the Argentina-Uruguay border. The film is witty, provocative and politically incorrect in all possible ways. "El gran simulador" was banned from theaters in Argentina for its politics (only to be shown at BAFICI, the Independent Film Festival of Buenos Aires and later released on DVD) and it was effectively released in Uruguay (across the border) with excellent B.O. results.
# "Tango Steps", Witter, producer, director. 33 min. Patagonia Film Group, USA, 2006. USA, 2006. Basic instructional video on basic tango steps.
# "Samba On Your Feet", with Haroldo Costa, Tia Zurica. Producer, Director, Editor. Verbum, Argentina, 2005. This documentary goes behind the scenes of Samba and Carnival's world in Rio de Janeiro to reveal the cultural clash that gave birth to a new tradition in South America. Haroldo Costa (Historian), explains how African slaves' beliefs, mixed with Spanish Catholic traditions and Indian influences helped create a remarkable fusion. The documentary includes interviews with veteran samba performer Xango da Mangueira who recalls the early days of Carnival when he and his fellow performers sang and danced in the streets but were treated like vagrants, harassed and arrested by the police. Mae Helena D'Oxosse, a priestess in the umbanda tradition, incorporates samba in her religious practices and carries on a tradition among her working-class followers that is five hundred years old. This doc has played at Toulouse Latin American Film Festival, 2008, Rio Film Festival, Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI) and Toronto Latino Film Festival.
# "De Frankfurt a Humahuaca", with Jorge Lovisolo. Producer. Argentina 200?. Second of three documentaries directed by Norberto N. Ramírez and produced by Eduardo Montes-Bradley on intellectuals in the NorthWest region of Argentina known as La puna, mainly Jujuy and Salta provinces. "De Frankfurt a Humahuaca" focuses on the life and works of Jorge Lovisolo, disciple of The Frankfurt School of philosophy, author of numerous essays. The film deals with Lovisolo's obsessions in a sort of self-imposed exile in Salta; his takes on religion within the local communities, the thoughts of Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno and others.
# "Kopla Vera", with Jesús Ramón Vera. Producer. Argentina, 200?. The first of three documentaries directed by Norberto N. Ramírez and produced by Eduardo Montes-Bradley on intellectuals living in the Northwest region of Argentina known as La puna, mainly Jujuy and Salta provinces. "Kopla Vera" focuses on the life and works of Jesús Ramón Vera, author of numerous verses inspired in the carnival liturgic of Jujuy.
# "El hombre invisible", Producer. Argentina, 2005. Dir. Eduardo López. A tribute to the world of film editors.
# "Yo y el tiempo", Producer, Argentina, 2005. Third of three documentaries directed by Norberto N. Ramírez is part of a trilogy on intellectuals in the Northwestern region of Argentina known as La puna, mainly Jujuy and Salta provinces. "Yo y el tiempo" is a documentary on Juan José Botelli, poet.
# "Dirigido por...", Producer. Argentina, 2004. Film directed by Rodolfo Durán on the craft of film making. Through a series of interviews to some of best known directors and filmmakers in Argentina. Featured interviews with: Adolfo Aristarain and Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Film Luis Puenzo.
# "Insurgentes", Producer, Editor. Argentina, 200?. Dir. Pablo Doudchisky
# "Las memorias del señor Alzheimer", with Jorge "Dipi" Dipaola. Producer. Argentina, 2004. Film directed by Sergio Belloti. The film has as sole protagonist Jorge "Dipi" Di Paola, a dadaist-exentric, writer-poet, an unconventional character of the Buenos Aires cultural scene in the seventies living at the time the film was shot in a self-imposed exile in Tandil, some 450 kilometers from the capital of Argentina. Di Paola, a disciple of Witold Gombrowicz recalls the bygone days when the polish writer and himself shared a small apartment in the city of Buenos Aires and later in Di Paola´s home-town of Tandil. Di Paola died in 2007 shortly after the movie was completed.
# "Negro sobre blanco", with Margarita Bróndolo. Producer. Argentina (2004). Dir. Eduardo López.
# "Jorge Riestra", with Jorge Riestra. Producer, Editor. 80 min., Argentina (2004). A film directed by Gustavo Postiglioni. A minor work on the saga of writers initiated by Montes-Bradley. This film seems more like a series of "conversations with..." than an actual documentary film. The subject, a rosarino writer (from the city of Rosario) is not sufficiently explore by the director living the audience with a sense of despair. In the other had, perhaps that was the intended purpose.
# "La oficina", Ass. Producer. Argentina (2004). A documentary by first-time director Blas Eloy Martínez son of laureate writer Tomás Eloy Martínez. The plot is set in the background of a red-tape paradise in the institutional nightmare of Argentine bureaucracy. Office of Notifications (translated from the original title), shown life in the office or department is which all court notices are prepared and later delivered. The film centers in the life´s of the bureaucrats and the art of delivering citations.
# "Una cierta mirada", with Juan José Sebreli, witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2004. Built as a series of conversations with Juan José Sebreli (philosopher), is perhaps one of the most interesting of the documentaries on writers by EMB-B. Sebreli recalls his entire life in front of camera taking the audience for a ride through timeless Buenos Aires. Sebreli´s extraordinary perception of the surroundings, the arts, the architecture and the music of the city he was born in and he loves is a constant throughout the entire film. In a way, this doc can be watch as a 20th century Tour Guide of Buenos Aires, a sketch on Peronism and yet, more.
# "Deliciosas perversiones polimorfas", with Alberto Laiseca. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2002. The director meets Laiseca riding the oldest underground train in Buenos Aires and later at his studio. Laiseca seems an extraordinary mad-man. Some of the main issues discussed on this film are the relationship of the protagonist with his father, life in rural province of Córdoba in the middle of the Pampas, Edgar A. Poe, William Shakespeare and the imminent arrival of the Antichrist.
# "Recóndita Armonía", with Mario Diament. Witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2002. Mario Diament is a renown journalist and professor of journalism at the University of Miami. On this film Diament recalls Jacobo Timerman and the years prior to and after the military coup of 1976 in Argentina.
# "Testigo del siglo", (Witness Of A Century) with Ismael Viñas. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2003. Montes-Bradley directed this documentary as Diana Hunter. The film was premiered at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI). In it Ismael Viñas, a legendary figure of the politics in Argentina in 20th Century, reappears after having disappeared from the face of the Earth, twenty six years earlier. In the film, Viñas refers to his youth next to David Viñas, to his father the Judge in charge of holding back the strikers in Patagonia in the 1920´s, to his imprisonment during the Peronist years and with particular emphasis to his relationship with Che Guevara and Salvador Allende amongst many other. The film was highly acclaimed and also criticize by the most extremist elements who saw on the Ismael Viñas on this film as a traitor to the cause he once so strongly defended. ["Ideografía de un mestizo", by Pilar Roca. p. 8] ["El tiempo de una vida" by Juan José Sebreli, Ed. Sudamericana, Argentina, 2005. p.186]
# "El equilibrista", with Dalmiro Sáenz. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2003
# "Le mot Juste", (The Right Word) with Héctor Tizón. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 200?
# "Marcos Ribak alias Andrés Rivera", with Andrés Rivera and Susana Fiorito. Director, producer, editor. Argentina, 200?
# "Planeta Bizzio", with Sergio Bizzio. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2003. Sergio Bizzio is a good friend of Montes-Bradley, perhaps that is the reason behind the director decided to hire fresh-out-of-college Nadina Fushimi to direct and conduct the interview, which is a dominant element throughout the film. Bizzio is a vanguardist, an offbeat poet and novelist who has also ventured into film with a dark comedy called “Animalada” about a farmer-in-love with one of his sheep. His novels have been translated to several languages.
# "No matarás", (Thou Shall Not Kill) with Marcelo Birmajer. witter, producer, director, editor. 200? The protagonist of this documentary is Marcelo Birmajer, a Jewish-Argentine writer of strong neo-liberal conviction, frequently at odds with the overwhelming "progressive"-minded cultural aparatik of Buenos Aires. In the film, Birmajer seems lost somewhere between his native Buenos Aires and the Middle East; holding a tight grip on the umbilical cord that his Jewish-mother preserves intact for generations to-come.
# "La otra orilla", with Luis Gusmán. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2003
# "Saludablemente en pelotas", with Juan Sasturain. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2003
# "Crónicas Mexicas", with Martín Caparrós. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 200?. In Crónicas Mexicas, Montes-Bradley (as Rita Clavel) teams-up with writer Martín Caparrós to follow on the steps of Spanish Conqueror Hernán Cortés. Together they traveled from Veracruz on golf coast of Mexico to Tenochtitlan, the ancient capital of the Aztec Empire. Caparrós becomes the omnipresent and omniscient protagonist of this journey through geography and time. His acute sense of irony and wit becomes a permanent fixtures throughout the entire film, provoking the audience into uncharted: the politically incorrect history of Latin America.
# "La célula fugitiva", with José Pablo Feinmann. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2002. Dir. Mariana Russo.
# "Desandando el tiempo", with Juan J. Bajarlía. Producer, editor. Argentina, 200?. Dir. Valentina Carrasco, pseudonymous of Rodolfo Durán.
# "En el nombre del padre", with Ana María Shua. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2002. Ma. Andrea Dominguez.
# "Espléndida decadencia", with Daniel Guebel. Producer, editor. Argentina, 2002
# "Cortázar: apuntes para un documental", witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2002
# "Los cuentos del timonel", with Osvaldo Bayer. witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 2001
# "Jorge Giannoni. NN, ése soy yo" (NN, The One In The Picture Is Me) Guest Appearance, Testimony. A film about Jorge Giannoni. Dir by: Gabriela Jaime, Argentina, 2000.
# "Harto The Borges", witter, producer, director, editor. Iruña Films, Argentina, 2000. Documentary on Jorge Luis Borges. Includes rare footage from a TV program with Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama aired at the time of the writer´s 80th birthday. The film also includes a series of interviews to various intellectuals such as Franco Lucentini. The film was shot in Milan, Rome, Paris, Geneva and Buenos Aires. ["Diccionario de directores del cine argentino" by Adolfo Martinez. Ed. Corregidor. 221 pages, 2004, Buenos Aires, Argentina.] ["Jorge Luis Borges as a Writer and Social Critic" by Gregary Joseph Racz. Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. ISBN ] ["Xul Solar" by Alvaro Abos. Ed. Sudamericana, 2004. ISBN ]
# "Soriano", witter, producer, director, editor. Argentina, 1998. This is perhaps the only film ever made on Osvaldo Soriano, an Best-Seller author in Argentina in the 1980´s. At least three of Soriano's best known novels made it to the silver screen. "Soriano" was shot in Paris, Rome and Buenos Aires following on the footsteps of Osvaldo Soriano into exile in the 1970´s. The film is not a celebration of Soriano but rather a fair and balanced approach to his life through the voice of friends and detractors. ["Carlos Gardel a la luz de la historia" by Nelson Bayardo. Fundación Bank Boston, 2000. ISBN ] ["Violentas imágenes de un tango peronista" by Brent J. Carbajal. Department of Modern and Classical Languages Western Washington University. Alpha, dic. 2007, no.25, p.185-191. ISSN .] ["Para textos bastan y sobran" by Juan Pablo Neyret. Universidad Nacional de MAr del Plata. Espéculo. Revista de estudios literarios. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2003] ["Efemérides literarias argentinas" by Carlos Paz. Biblioteca Nacional; Sociedad Argentina de Escritores, 1999.]
# "El sekuestro" (The Kid Napping) Fiction, Satire. With Sandra Ballesteros and Rodolfo Ranni. witter, producer, director. Argentina, 1997. The critics destroyed the film the day of its premier at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival in Argentina. However, "The Kid Napping" remains the director's favorite to this date. "The Kid Napping" was shot in the state of Florida in 1995 and, on November 4 of the same year Montes-Bradley married the leading-lady Sandra Ballesteros. The film is a political farce taking on the events that so profoundly marked Argentine society during the nineteen seventies. It has been said that the plot is an excuse to mock the struggle of the guerrilla organizations that confronted the military regime lead by General Jorge Rafael Videla. According to Montes-Bradley, "The Kid Napping" is a farce and nothing more. Many disagree. The story is set in an imaginary country called Rio Hondo where a band of revolutionary improvisers kidnap the wrong man, one that no one is prepared to pay a ransom for.
# "American Manifesto", (short) Director, Producer, Editor. Argentina (1993). "American Manifesto" premiered at the "Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival" (BAFICI) in 2005. It was shot in a club called Muddy´s, in Denver, Colorado, sometime during the winter of 1993. The protagonist name is Steve, last name unknown. The film was shot on Hi-8 and is all-in-one take. Steve has just been released from jail and he is quite unhappy with America where says what prevails is a dysfunctional "shistem". The film became a cult film in internet and still can be found in several YouTube-like sites.
# "Double Obsession", with Margaux Hemingway, Beth Fisher, Scott Valentine Jamie Horton and Frederic Forrest. Co-Witter, producer, director. Edited by John Venzon. TriStar Columbia / Reivaj Films, 1992. Perhaps the sole merit of this thriller is the fact that is one of Margo Hemingway's last. Otherwise is just another B-Movie which did quite well on Television Worldwide. The film was shot on Campus at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Montes-Bradley hardly ever talks about this film written by himself in collaboration with Jeffrey Delman and Rick Marx. Note: The film was also known as Mirror Image. [Rocky Mountain News, July 22, 1991. Arts & Entertainment.] [Colorado Daily. Agugust 2-5, 1991 Vol. 98 No. 183] [Sunday Camera. Boulder, CO. July 14, 1991] [The Denver Post, September 25, 1992.] [The Profile. Denver, October 1992. Volume 15.]
# "SmoothTalker", with Lisa Weikgenant, Peter Crombi, Stuart Whitman and Burt Ward. Co-Writer, Prod. USA, 1992. During the shooting of SmoothTalker Montes-Bradley and Lisa Weikgenant moved-in together, first to his apartment in Los Angeles and soon thereafter to Denver, Colorado. The relationship lasted at least four years. Lisa is also known for her stage name: Blair Parker.
# "Tríptico Vertical", (Short) Witter, Producer, Director, Editor. USA, 1986. Not much is known about the nearly fifteen minutes art-documentary on the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. It was shot in Buenos Aires sometime in 1984, shortly after the return to democratic rule. Music by Julio Lacarra.
# "Man maste ju leva", Actor. Dir. Margareta Vinterheden. Sweden, 1978

The great pretender

El gran simulador (The Great Pretender, 2006) is the documentary in which Montes-Bradley mocks a group piqueteros who have been manifesting on an ongoing border dispute with Uruguay over the installation of a paper-mill plant property of Botnia a commercial firm based in Finland. The idea of ridiculing a "popular cause" is unusual in Argentina where documentaries are often aimed in the exact opposite direction. The Monty-Pythonesque approach to the cause of the environmentalists did more for the popularity of the filmmaker than the previous twenty years dedicated to making documentaries on writers and philosophers and alike, which resulted on an extraordinary library of more than forty titles on Latin American Culture. The media overplayed the imminent release of "El gran simulador" in Buenos Aires in December 2005, and film was ultimately censured by the National Institute of Cinematography (Incaa). In January 2006, Montes-Bradley and his family were force to seek save-Heaven in neighboring Uruguay where the documentary was well received and released on January 12, 2006. In a most recent note "El gran simulador" was ultimately released in Argentina in April, 2008, and distributed by Editorial Perfil, the opposition media conglomerate own by Jorge Fontevecchia.

Music Videos

Eduardo Montes-Bradley directed a handful of music-videos at odds with the dominant trends at the time when MTV Latino was still in the experimental stage. In fact,"Rumbera", by Willy Chirino, (Sony Music, 1994) soon became a cult video not only because of the fact that it was shot in one single take but because of the extravaganza brought to the screen. The seven minutes long take take was shot in a South Beach in a cabaret and included monkeys, transvestites, fire-eaters, a salsa-band, dancers and almost a hundred extras. "Rumbera" opened the doors to salsa in the regular basis in MTV Latino, until then, exclusively focused to Rock&Roll, Pop and ballads. "Rumbera", shot on S-16mm, screened and compete in Havana, Cuba at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in December 1994. That was the first time Cubans had a chance to see Chirino on the screen in his own country where he stills remains, like Olga Guillot and others, strictly blacklisted from radio and television. Another interesting music-video by Montes-Bradley is "Dale Pascual" by the pop-band Los enanitos verdes. It was shot in 35mm in La Cava, a slum in San Isidro, in the Province of Buenos Aires. The track spells out the hardships a have-not in Argentina who works and works and never gets paid. La Cava provided a crude setting exposing the worst effects of unemployment and recession. To underline the sacrifice of those living in La Cava, the director staged the crucifixion of a naked ten years old boy. The image was too much for the networks in most Latin American countries. In Chile the film was censured and MTV refused to play it across the board.

Bibliography

Books

*"Cortázar sin barba". Biography. Spanish. Random House Mondadori, Debate, 394 pages, Spain, 2005. ISBN:. Contributors Garriga David Gálvez-Casellas and Carles Álvarez Garriga. In less that five hundred pages the author of the yet most complete biographical work on Julio Cortázar exposes the mechanisms used to build Cortázar: the myth, providing at the same time the tools to destroy the myth, or better yet, helping Cortázar back into his more human and trscendent dimension. Montes-Bradley had previously boarded at least two other holy-cows of the Argentine cultural "aparatik": Borges and Soriano. With "Cortázar sin Barba" (Cortázar without a beard) Montes-Bradkey, once again goes for one of the untouchables. Montes-Bradley approaches the pathological relationship of the author with his mother in face of an absent father. The illegitimate nature of the birth of Cortázar’s mother and the clandestine relationship of his grandparents is traced in Cortázar’s literary works with "detectivesque" obsession. “Cortázar sin barba” (Cortázar without a beard), is well documented and written in the style, no longer visible unfortunately, of many classic biographies in the English literature which will tend to prove not Who killed the man but Who made him up. Hence, the French accent in Cortázar turns out to be no more than a dysfunctional dislalia, his father allegedly a diplomat in Belgium at the time of Cortázar’s birth is no diplomat but rather a salesman working for his father-in-law who never wanted to marry granny. “No one writes biographies like this one any more” said Joaquin Marco in his review for "El Cultural" in Madrid. “Biographers no longer write like Richard Ellmann and no foundations dares to finance an undertaking such as the one Montes-Bradley has chosen to write”. But Montes-Bradley goes beyond the simple facts of a life tylored for a generation desperately seeking revolutionaries and literary heroes, to penetrates deeper into the fiber of the Argentine society. Montes-Bradley takes us through loyalty and betray in Argentina at the time the Spanish Civil War; Fascism at the University where Cortázar taught French Literature in the nineteen forties when Peronism came to occupy the space left vacant by the unfatherly figure of the man who bailed living no trace behind. “Cortázar sin barba” is more that just biography, in a way it is a X-Ray to the bottom half of the 20th century in Argentina. The first edition of "Cortázar sin barba" was published by Sudamericana, Argentina, 2004. ["Anales de literatura hispanoamericana" by Universidad Complutense de Madrid Cátedra de Literatura Hispanoamericana, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Departamento de Filología Española IV. Vol. ) ] ["Julio Cortázar: El otro lado de las cosas" by Miguel Herráez. Institució Alfons el Magnànim, Diputació de València,2001. ISBN: ]

* "Osvaldo Soriano, un retrato". Italian. Random House Mondadori, Italy, 2001. Translation of previous edition by Grupo Editorial Norma, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, 2000. ISBN: . This book summons a series of interviews in connection with the documentary film on the same subject by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. The list of interviewd men and women include: Ana María Shua, Martín Caparrós, Giani Miná, Mempo Giardinelli... There are also a few chapters, introduction and epilogue written by Montes-Bradley with a fare amount of footnotes and references. ["Osvaldo Soriano".By Cristián Montes. Published by RIL Editores,2004. Original from the University of Michigan]

* "Ya sé que todo es mentira". Short Stories. Spanish. Editorial Nuevo Extremo,(Buenos Aires 2000. Some of the short stories inclueded in this compilation have been previously published in English in literary magazines in the US. Foreword by Osvaldo Bayer.

* "Senxo", Selected Poems. Editorial Grupo Archivo de Comunicación, New York, 1984. Foreword by Armando Tejada Gómez.

Journalism

Eduardo Montes-Bradley has contributed with the following: "Les cinemas de la Amerique Latine", by the "Association Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine de Toulouse" France; "Critica de Argentina"; La Nación; "La Jornada", México, "El Amante de cine"; the monthly review "Latinoamérica e Tutto il Sud dell Mondo" Rome; the literary magazine "Esperando a Godot"; the art-magazine "Revista Lote", Venado Tuerto and "Radar" cultural supplement included once a week with "Página/12", Buenos Aires. He´s also a regular contributor with a weekly column on the Sunday issue of "Diario Perfil" directed by Jorge Fonteveccia.

His interventions can be classified in three categories: a. In-depth articles on subjects as diverse as the life of Dean Reed in the Soviet Union and the aftermath of the Battleship Potemkin; b. Sudden and brief pieces on current affairs with a particular emphasis in domestic politics in Argentina. One of Montes-Bradley´s bull´s eye of choice appears to be the National Institute of Cinematography (INCAA) a government institution repeatedly denounced for it´s high levels of corruption, it´s know arbitrary rules and censorship and the discretionary handling of public resources. c. Letters to the Editor. Probably the most curious form of interventionism. Montes-Bradley has written a substantial number of "letters to the editors" in the past becoming a regular "de facto" columnist in sections of newspapers and magazines other wise reserved for the occasional reader.

In-Depth: Perhaps the most interesting of the in-depth articles is the one dealing with the aftermath of Battleship Potemkin. According to the official story, narrated by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein in his The Battleship Potemkin,1925, the vessel disappears in front of the camera in 1905 after firing twice against the city of Odessa. Montes-Bradley´s questions the mutiny on board the Russian ship and the nature and proportion of the bombardment of Odessa as well as the whereabouts of the ship and her crew until the triumph of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The piece refutes Eisenstein's arguments bringing some lite to the years that followed the events of 1905 and to the truth behind the intentions of Eisenstein in his celebrated movie, a work-for-hire commended by the Communist Party long after the facts. The article was published in Página/12, on March 7, 2005. Another article worth reading is "El Elvis Rojo". "The Red Elvis" is the story of Dean Reed, Colorado-born country singer who defected to the Soviet Union in the nineteen seventies after a brief sojourn in Latin America, particularly Chile and Argentina. The story of Reed is surrounded by mystery and false assumptions. It has been said, for instance, that the red cowboy worked for the CIA, that he was a double agent, that he moved was a KGB agent of Propaganda and that he was a womanizer playing a dangerous game that ultimately cost him his own life. "The Red Elvis" was published for the first time in Spanish in Página/12, on January 27, 2005.

Memberships

Montes-Bradley is a member of "The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese" (AATSP), Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), Directores de Cine Independiente (DIC) and the American Club of Buenos Aires.

Notes

References

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# [http://www.embentertainment.com/frontend/index.php?p=verlink&id=184 Biography, Notes On Myself by Eduardo Montes-Bradley]
# [http://www.cinelatino.com.fr/fr/index.htm "Les cinemas de la Amerique Latine"]
# [http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=contrakultura YouTube Contrakultura Channel ]
# [http://filmakers.com/indivs/Samba.htm The Filmmakers Library]
# [http://www.greenaccord.org/portale/article.asp?id=225 Greenacord]
# [http://www.bradleyfoundation.org/genealogies/Bingley/tobg126.htm#63 Thomas Osgood Bradley Foundation]