Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform that helps bring creative projects to life, recently featured the short film project Brenda by Undergraduate Writing alumna Bernadette Bridges ('19 CC).
Brenda is a short comedy-drama that follows the day-in-the-life of a lonely old woman. Over the course of the day, as Brenda encounters and interacts with strangers, she realizes that she isn’t as alone as she thinks. Through contrasting images of dream sequences and reality, the short film explores “the magic held within day-to-day interactions.” For Bridges, Brenda is “an ode to community and the hope we can offer one another as fellow human beings.”
Bridges first conceived of Brenda in June of 2020, when in the midst of the pandemic, she moved across the country, away from almost everybody she knew. While navigating the loneliness she felt from the transition, she also found comfort in the fleeting day-to-day interactions she shared with strangers. "Human interaction continually offers camaraderie, even when it’s unintended... When someone holds the door open. When I hear someone humming to themselves as they walk past me. When someone lets me pet their dog,” Bridges stated.
Bridges graduated from Columbia College in 2019 with a BA in Creative Writing. While at Columbia, she worked as an Administrative Assistant to Dorla McIntosh in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program. As both an employee and graduate of the department, Bridges referred to the program as a “support-system and a community to which I can always return. I want to make this film as a thank you to communities like this one that has always reminded me that I am part of a ‘pack’ rather than being a ‘lone wolf.’”
Bridges is an LA-based filmmaker, poet, and storyteller. Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, she graduated cum laude from Columbia University in 2019. Her directing credits include her short film Algae (2021), Columbia University’s 125th Annual Varsity Show (2019), CU Players’ Middletown (2018), and her short film What she Created (2017). In 2019, she was awarded The Van Rensselaer Award for her poems “Knot to Self” and “The Poem Itself Could Be.”
