Two documentaries by filmmaker and combat veteran Daniel Bernardi screening on opening night of the 2023 GI Film Festival San Diego should ensure that the stories of U.S. Navy Capt. Kathy Bruyere and U.S. Army Cultural Support Team (CPT) squad member Jennifer Moreno are not forgotten.
Bernardi’s 13-minute “Time for Change: The Kathy Bruyere Story” and hourlong “Ultimate Sacrifices: CPT Jennifer Moreno” highlight Monday’s festival launch at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. Over six days, 31 films made by or for military and veterans will be screened.
Bruyere, who died three years ago, was among the “Women of the Year” on the cover of Time magazine in 1976 alongside such other trailblazers as tennis legend Billie Jean King. She famously sued the Defense Department the following year in an effort to give women in the military the right to serve on naval ships — and she won.
Moreno, who grew up locally and was part of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) at San Diego High, gave her life at 25 in Afghanistan while trying to aid a fallen fellow soldier. She was awarded posthumously a Bronze Star for valor.
Filmmaker Bernardi, a professor at San Francisco State University, served in Iraq leading Combat Camera for the Army’s 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups. A previous documentary short he helped produce, “Alene B. Durek: The First Woman Admiral,” screened at the GI Film Festival two years ago.
While documenting “the grim reality of hurry up and don’t wait” of the military, Bernardi said, he also gets to spotlight “the camaraderie and the brotherhood and the sisterhood.”
“I deal with all the difficult issues, but I also deal with the interesting ones, like the pioneers like Kathy (Gruyere).”
His short film about her came about, he said, “by accident.”
He was referred to her on a shoot by a director who told him, “ ’You’ve got to meet Kathy.’ I was sitting down, talking to her, and I had no idea that she’d been on the cover of Time. I knew I had some good stuff from her, but I didn’t know I had a film until she’d passed.”
Bernardi recalled reaching out then to Bruyere’s sons and eventually earning their trust. “That’s when I knew I had a film,” he said.
Moreno’s story he learned by Googling in search of women killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He discovered a Latina woman whose mother had illegally entered the U.S. with her four children, all of them for a time living in a garage in San Diego. “There was immigration, there was a woman of color, there was poverty — everything that expresses why Latinos and Mexicans shouldn’t be treated the way they’ve been treated,” said Bernardi.
“In my head, I was making a film that was a social commentary,” he said, “and that’s not what came out. What did was a remarkable young woman and the grief and tragedy that her death ended up producing.”
Bernardi subsidized the making of “Ultimate Sacrifices: CPT Jennifer Moreno” himself. “I was going to tell this story,” he said emphatically, “no matter what.”
Coddon is a freelance writer.
GI Film Festival San Diego
When: Monday through May 20
Where: Museum of Photographic Arts, Balboa Park
Tickets: Most screenings $10; military and veterans $8; opening night tickets $25 and $20
Online: gifilmfestivalsd.org