Daniel Bernardi

Daniel Bernardi
Daniel Leonard Bernardi (born June 16, 1964) is a professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University, founder and President of El Dorado Films and Commander in the United States Navy Reserve. Bernardi earned a Bachelor of Arts in Radio-TV (1984) and a Masters of Arts in Media Arts (1988) from the University of Arizona. He went on to earn a PhD in Film and Television Studies from UCLA (1994) and he completed a University of California postdoctoral research fellowship in 1997.
Career
Bernardi has taught film, television and new media at UC Riverside (1997–1998), UCLA (1999-2000), Arizona State University (1999-2011), and SFSU (2011–Present). He was awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (1994), a UC President's Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1995–1997), and a Fulbright Fellowship (2009). Nonetheless, his deployment to Iraq prevented his acceptance of the Fulbright Fellowship. From 1998 to 2000, he worked for the Sci-Fi Channel as a consultant, writer and producer/host of the web feature Future Now (since deleted).
Since his years at UCLA, Daniel L. Bernardi has earned a reputation of notoriety among the more avid Star Trek fans due to his writings about the role of race in the films, especially through his 1998 book Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future".
Bernardi was an officer in the United States Navy Reserve and from May 2009 to February 2010 he was recalled to Active Duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom for ten months, where he trained Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) and Emergency Response Brigade (ERB) Soldiers on combat camera and media operations. In connection to his film scholar work, he also managed US media embeds, including CNN, NBC and AP, and US Army and US Navy journalists and photographers. Following these events, in 2011 he joined the Mission Public Affairs Officer for Pacific Partnership 2011, an annual humanitarian assistance initiative sponsored by the United States Pacific Fleet. Bernardi managed a team of military (U.S., Australian and New Zealand) and NGO (Project Hope) photographers, videographers and writers assigned to document and report on the mission.
Following his tour in Iraq and the South Pacific, Bernardi, working with a larger research team including H. L. (Bud) Goodall Jr., received a $1.6 million renewable grant from the Office of Naval Research to catalogue and study the impact rumors have on counterinsurgency operations. The aim of the project is for expeditionary forces to have access to these narratives and to work against them through the team's analysis'.
Veteran Documentary Corps (2012 - present)
Inspired by his own experiences, in 2012, Bernardi launched the Veteran Documentary Corps (VDC), a documentary project founded by donations and grants, the VA and National Cemetery Administration including. VDC produces and exhibits short documentaries on the struggles and successes of veterans from across the world. The Veteran Documentary Corps has produced and distributed more than fifty short documentaries on veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the fall-out of the former "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and a range of other topics. Bernardi contributes to the project both as filmmaker and producer, and all the films are made by professional filmmakers including Jesse Moss, Andrés Gallegos, Silvia Turchin, Eliciana Nascimento, among others.
The Veteran Documentary Corps was met with wide acclaim, and was received positively from veterans and public alike. Following these successes, Bernardi created in 2018 El Dorado Films, the distributor of Veteran Documentary Corps (VDC) films. Similarly, El Dorado Films is a specialized filmmaking collective that works across the U.S. and around the world to craft compelling documentaries, shorts, and commercials, which offers also an online streaming platform.
Daniel Bernardi's documentaries have received a wide international reception on the international film festival circuit and won many prizes. In 2023 two of his latest documentaries on women in the military: Time for Change: the Kathy Bruyere Story and Ultimate Sacrifices: Cpt. Jennifer Moreno screened at the opening night of the 2023 GI Film Festival San Diego
Bibliography
As author
Off the Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence (co-author). 2017. University of California Press.
Examines the business and craft of screenwriting in the era of media convergence. Daniel Bernardi and Julian Hoxter use the recent history of screenwriting labor coupled with close analysis of scripts in the context of the screenwriting paraindustry—from "how to write a winning script" books to screenwriting software—to explore the state of screenwriting today. They address the conglomerate studios making tentpole movies, expanded television, Indiewood, independent animation, microbudget scripting, the video games industry, and online content creation. Designed for students, producers, and writers who want to understand what studios want and why they want it, this book also examines how scripting is developing in the convergent media, beneath and beyond the Hollywood tentpole. By addressing specific genres across a wide range of media, this essential volume sets the standard for anyone in the expanded screenwriting industry and the scholars that study it.
Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence Rumors (co-authored). 2012. Rutgers University Press.
Bernardi and his co-authors characterize rumors as bits and pieces of prevailing narrative systems and local cultural artifacts, and that their anonymous origin and dubious truth claims afford them a type of concealment until their effects are known and the damage is done. Focusing on the impact of rumors on counterinsurgency operations (Iraq), counter terrorism whisper campaigns (Indonesia), and civil disobedience online (Singapore), they argue that rumors are narrative IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Device, in that they're constructed of locally available materials and hidden in the landscape until detonation. Bernardi and his co-authors see rumors as similarly ad hoc, constructed of bits and pieces of narrative systems, and lying unseen to the military information operator, diplomat, civic outreach coordinator, or business strategist until exploding and disrupting expensive and highly wrought communication campaigns.
Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future". 1998. Rutgers University Press.
Bernardi traces the shifting and reforming meaning of race articulated throughout the Star Trek television series, feature films, and fan community, investigating and, in his word, "politicizing" the presentation of race in Star Trek in the original series of the 1960s, the feature films and television spin-offs of the 1980s and 1990s, and the current fan community on the Internet. Through both critical and historical analysis, he proposes a method of studying the framing of race in popular film and television that integrates sociology, critical theory and cultural studies. Bernardi goes on to examine the representational and narrative functions of race in Star Trek and explores how the meaning of "race" in the science fiction series has been facilitated or constrained by creative and network decision-making, by genre, by intertextuality, and by fans. He interprets how the changing social and political movements of the times have influenced the production and meaning of "Trek" texts and the ways in which the ongoing series negotiated and reflected these turbulent histories. Unpopular with many Trekkers, Star Trek and History went into a second printing after a year of its original publication. Other readers feel Bernardi apologies for Star Trek's racial vision.
As editor
Race in American Film: Voices and Visions That Shaped a Nation, Volumes I, II and III. (co-editor). 2017. Greenwood Publishers.
Hollywood's Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema(co-edited). 2012. Wayne State University Press.
Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers on Gender, Race and Sexuality in Film. 2009. University of Texas Press.
The Persistence of Whiteness. 2007. Routledge.
Classic Hollywood/Classic Whiteness. 2001. University of Minnesota Press.
The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema. 1996. Rutgers University Press.
In these books, Bernardi relies on a range of scholars to show how race in general and whiteness in particular formed unique representational, narrational, and institutional patterns across U.S. film history. The introductions to each book set out a broad theory of whiteness in American film that, in brief, positions whiteness as a performance about who passes and who doesn't pass as white — and what it means in specific films and periods of film history to either pass or not pass as white. The last book in the series, Filming Difference, includes essays and interviews by filmmakers who address critically and creatively how they go about representing race, gender and sexuality in their work.
Bernardi interest in the representation of race is still present and he actively writes for American newspapers on contemporary films, such as the upcoming biopic on Leonard Bernstein 'Maestro'.
Filmography
As producer
Daniel Bernardi is the producer of both short and feature documentaries for his production company, El Dorado Films, and for the Veteran Documentary Film Corps, such as these documentary features:
From Mexico to Vietnam: A Chicano Story (2022, Andrés Gallegos)
The War to End All Wars… and its American Veterans (2020, Daniel L. Bernardi)
The Forgotten War (2020, Daniel L. Bernardi)
Objector (2019, Molly Stuart)
Ultimate Sacrifices: Capt. Jennifer Moreno (2022, Daniel L. Bernardi)
Selected publications
Bernardi, Daniel. The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema. 1996. Rutgers University Press.
Bernardi, Daniel. Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future. 1998. Rutgers University Press.
Bernardi, Daniel. "Where's the Beef?" Flow On-line, Volume 2. April 1, 2005.
"Narrative Landmines: The Explosive Effects of Rumors in Syria and Insurgencies Around the World". Small Wars Journal. March 21, 2013.
Word:ChristChurch, Autumn Season 2017. "James Gleick: Time Travel Feat. James Gleick, Dr Daniel Bernardi (interviewer)". Audiomack. July 19, 2017.
"Prof. Daniel Bernardi on Star Trek and Race." (interview with Bernardi) Trekdom - Star Trek Fanzine. June 25, 2007.
"Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Bernardi." In Depth Show. Federal News Radio. January 10, 2014. Radio.
References
Film theorists
American mass media scholars
United States Navy personnel of the Iraq War
Living people
1964 births
Educators from San Juan, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican United States Navy personnel
Arizona State University faculty
UCLA Film School alumni
University of Arizona alumni
United States Navy officers
United States Navy reservists