Daniel Bernardi

Inspired by his own experiences, in 2012, Bernardi launched the Veteran Documentary Corps[3] (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.[4]

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:[5] 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[6]

• 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.[7]

• 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.[8]

• Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future". 1998. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2466-0

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.[9] 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.[10] Other readers feel Bernardi apologies for Star Trek's racial vision.[11]

• Race in American Film: Voices and Visions That Shaped a Nation, Volumes I, II and III. (co-editor). 2017. Greenwood Publishers.[12]
• Hollywood's Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema(co-edited). 2012. Wayne State University Press.[13] ISBN 9780814334829
• Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers on Gender, Race and Sexuality in Film. 2009. University of Texas Press.[14] ISBN 0-292-71974-4
• The Persistence of Whiteness. 2007. Routledge.[15] ISBN 0-415-77412-8
• Classic Hollywood/Classic Whiteness. 2001. University of Minnesota Press.[16] ISBN 0-8166-3239-1
• The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema. 1996. Rutgers University Press.[17] ISBN 0-8135-2276-5

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'.[18]

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)[19]

Ultimate Sacrifices: Capt. Jennifer Moreno (2022, Daniel L. Bernardi)