[Her films include three Academy Award nominees: "Union Maids,"
"Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists" (with Jim Klein) and "The
Last Truck: Closing of A GM Plant" (with Steven Bognar). ]
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JULIA REICHERT, OSCAR-WINNING GODMOTHER OF DOCUMENTARIES, DIES  
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Kathryn Mobley
December 2, 2022
WYSO
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_ Her films include three Academy Award nominees: "Union Maids,"
"Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists" (with Jim Klein) and "The
Last Truck: Closing of A GM Plant" (with Steven Bognar). _

Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar won an Academy Award for best
feature documentary and a Sundance Film Festival best director award
for American Factory., Netflix

 

Julia Reichert, an Academy Award winning documentarian whose films
often wrestled with race, gender and class, has died. She was 76.

She was known in the international film world as the "godmother of
American independent documentaries." Others applaud the Academy Award
winner as an activist.

She saw herself as a feminist and the curator of Midwestern stories.

The long-time Yellow Springs resident and former WYSO host explored
the stories of ordinary, working class people in relationship to
gender, social-economic class, activism and race in America.

Her films include three Academy Award nominees: "Union Maids" and
"Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists" (with Jim Klein), and
"The Last Truck: Closing of A GM Plant" (with Steven Bognar). "The
Last Truck" documented the last GM truck to roll off the Moraine
assembly line.

In 2020, she and her partner Steven Bognar won an Academy Award for
best feature documentary and a Sundance Film Festival best director
award for "American Factory."

Many of Reichert’s views were ignited while attending Antioch
College in the mid 1960s. She was part of a small group of female
students who read provocative essays about women’s liberation while
questioning social norms.

“I grew up, I came of age in the '60s. Millions of us saw racism,
saw U.S. domination around the world. Imperialism. Saw huge
inequalities class wise. We said the system’s not working and we
became, in some broad sense, revolutionaries," she told WYSO in an
interview last year. "Not that we wanted to attack the White House
but we really wanted to change society."

Reichert and her compatriots were interested in building institutional
alternatives.

"How do we live the life we foresee, that we’d like to have — how
do we do that? Thinking, sexism and patriarchy. This just doesn't go
to the government and the boardroom and the job. It goes to the
bedroom and the kitchen, right?" she said. "It goes to how we treat
each other. So if you want to start rooting out these sexist ways we
operate, I mean, both women looking down upon ourselves and men
thinking they own the world and are smarter and more capable. It goes
both ways, right? So I think there was a general sense we can build a
new world and there's a line we can bring to birth a new world on the
ashes of the old for the union makes us strong." 

[Julia Reichert]

WYSO Archives

While she was a student at Antioch College, Julia Reichert spent time
at WYSO hosting a radio show called The Single Girl.

While at Antioch, Reichert hosted a weekly show on WYSO, called The
Single Girl, that challenged women to think beyond the narrow gender
traditions in which they were raised.

"The radio station and the darkroom I credit as my forge. But at the
time, you're not thinking that," she said. "I had no idea I would be,
quote unquote, a filmmaker. I just knew I loved photography. I loved
getting better at it. I loved learning about taking pictures. And I
really loved the radio." 

Reichert grew up in Bordentown New Jersey with three brothers. She
often described herself as an outsider.

"I was a very awkward kid, wore glasses really early, and in those
days you were four eyes. I was a tomboy. The idea that you would sit
around with scissors and cut out little dresses and stick them on
cardboard dolls. I just totally did not get that," she said. "And I
didn't know anybody who was like me ... I loved nature. I loved
science. But I always wanted to understand how people worked because I
often thought I was like a martian. I was intensely curious about
people because I felt so different from everybody else."

These awkward feelings combined with her unquenchable desire to reveal
quiet human truths sparked her 1971 debut film, "Growing up Female," a
joint project with then partner Jim Klein. Forty years later, the
Library of Congress for the National Film Registry selected it as a
historically significant film.

During her 50-year career, Hollywood offers came Reichert's way —
accompanied by what she called "real money." But the artist credits
her personal commitment to tell the stories of people for keeping her
planted in the Midwest.

"We need filmmakers, radio, people, whatever. Activists in the
Midwest. We need people who are interested in examining and changing
the world. We need to put down roots so we can be a voice where there
is no voice. The Midwest, in this case, it was Dayton, Ohio, and I'm
very proud of that."

Jonathan McNeal manages Dayton’s independent Neon Theater.

“She saw the city struggling with the closing of the GM plant and
those were stories she wanted to get out into the world because she
knew there were real people who needed her story telling,” he said.

Reichert was co-founder of New Day Films, an independent film
distribution co-op. She earned a Career Achievement Award from the
International Documentary Association. She also authored, "Doing It
Yourself," the first book on self-distribution in independent film.

And over the years, she mentored dozens of emerging filmmakers as a
Professor of Motion Pictures at Wright State University.

Reichert leaves her partner Steven Bognar, daughter Lela Klein Holt,
three brothers, two grandchildren, a nephew and a host of loving
friends and colleagues.

_Kathryn Mobley [[link removed]] is an
award-winning broadcast journalist, crafting stories for more than 30
years. She’s reported and produced for TV, NPR affiliate and for the
web. Mobley also contributes to several area community groups. She
sings tenor with World House Choir (Yellow Springs), she’s a board
member of the Beavercreek Community Theatre and volunteers with two
community television operations, DATV (Dayton) and MVCC
(Centerville)._

_WYSO [[link removed]] is the Greater Dayton area’s
only NPR News station, and we carry their flagship programs, including
Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Our own news department
[[link removed]] delivers local and state news plus public
affairs programming and news specials. In addition to NPR, we carry
programming from American Public Media and PRX._

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