St. Cloud State University

Vertna Bradley

Professor Bradley, an experimental filmmaker/author and winner of two national Accolade Awards, is the newest tenure track assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communications.

Born in Mexico, Missouri, she grew up along the Mississippi River in Keokuk, Iowa.

Professor Bradley holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film and video production, a Master of Fine Arts in film/video production. Her minor is in mass communication with an emphasis on broadcast journalism, media literacy, and cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

She will soon complete her second terminal degree with a Doctor of Philosophy in media and communication at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland.

Her dissertation and future book, “Between the Sprocket Holes: The Voyeuristic Essence & Reflexivity of Identity in Cinema” examines the social economy of the film industry in terms of spectatorship, gender/sexual identification and spatial intelligence, and the relationship between media and culture. It explores what accounts for the psychoanalytical, metaphysical, and metapsychological assignment of the voyeuristic and reflexive process of (self) identification through cinema.

Professor Bradley’s motto is “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

Believing anyone can accomplish anything; she strives to bring this theory and practice it in the classroom every day, and encourages her students to think of their academic, creative, personal, and career goals the same way.

Her main goal in the classroom is to provide an environment that is conducive to learning and to her students’ total development, not just the future artists or producers they are destined to become.

Teaching diversity and drawing from her own travels and global attitude, Professor Bradley thinks it is vital to foster an environment and understanding of a multicultural world community.

She also likes to think of her creative work as non-linear celebrations of experimentation.

The art that she creates in her films and videos do not fit neatly into the Classical Hollywood style of filmmaking or into the neat little cookie cutter of what has come to be the norm for Avant- Garde Cinema. Instead, her art is a vehicle that allows her to convey messages through non-traditional methods and is an outlet that lets her release innovative energy.

A surrealistic pattern seems to emerge in her work that creates a dreamlike mix of fact and fantasy.

Her interest in expressing herself through film/books is a culmination of over 15 years of working in, creating, and studying mass media as a copywriter, author, producer, videographer, filmmaker, editor, visual artist and professor.

She works in forms ranging from handmade/cameraless films, to 16mm and super 8 films, to video and broadcast television.

Her collection of work includes avant-garde, non-narrative, documentary, narrative, television commercials and news topicals/promotions.

Her true passion is 16mm film because, as a medium, she believes that can it be touched, felt, and manipulated more readily than video.

Publications:

• Scratch: Handmade & Cameraless Films, A Step By Step Approach, a how to guide and look into the world and creative process of cameraless and handmade film and the art of direct filmmaking techniques, work in progress.
• An Open Envelope: A Look Within, a collection of experimental writings authored in St. Cloud MN, by St. Cloud University students in Comm 414, March 2007
• Longing, women and their desire for other women, wanting, needing, feeling, loving and sometimes the pain that accompanies it, March 2007
• Hurricane Rita: Reflections of a Generation Witnessing Disaster, anthology of eighty survival stories compiled through the eyes of students, February 2006.
• The Reading: What You Knew You Didn't Know, eclectic collection of experimental writings by McNeese State University students, June 2006
• Encounters, a nonlinear expression and celebration of lesbian desire, August 2005

Films/Videos:

• "Whisper Leigh" an intimate look into the life of Leigh Smythe, a 61 year-old transgender woman from the Twin Cities, 2008
• "Hair Daze" explore the issue of black women's hair and maintenance as it relates to society, culture, and standards of beauty, 2003
• "What Waits for You?" explores a controlling and confining relationship utilizing scenes of nature, 2002
• "Eye Know" a mischievous portrait of a woman that seems to know something that the rest of us can only wonder, 1997
• "Trompo" a cameraless silent film taking a nostalgic look at a beloved toy, 1996
• “What She Needs” a short in post production about a young African American lesbian’s journey from small town life to city life with her long term girlfriend. 
• "My First Pride" a documentary compiling memories, magic, and sense of community associated with people's first Gay/Lesbian experience, work in progress
• "Channeling" a meditation on Nirvana: the fusion of nature, Being, and reality as the conscious mind separates from the physical body, work in progress
• "3660 Frames" explores/questions the single moment in time, work in progress
• "Barbed Wire" cameraless film made from found footage from an old education psychology film, work in progress

Music:

• "Just Add Water " an original experimental music CD completed with Mass Communication students at St. Cloud State University, 2006
• "Music or Else" an original experimental music CD completed with Mass Communication students at McNeese State University, 2006

Mass Communications Adjunct Faculty List