Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert has died aged 76
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist Julia Reichert has passed away at the age of 76 following a 15-year battle with cancer. A pioneering figure, she was praised for championing women’s rights and the struggles of the working classes in such films as 1971’s Growing Up Female, 1976’s Union Maids, and the 2019 Oscar-winner American Factory.
According to reports, Reichert died on Thursday night. She had previously attended the 2020 Academy Awards despite undergoing chemotherapy, walking on stage with frequent collaborator Steven Bognar to accept their award.
Reichert was born in New Jersey to a working-class family, intending to pursue a life as a social activist before falling into filmmaking. “We were social activists rather than filmmakers, doing it by the seat of our pants,” her partner and co-director, Jim Klein, said. “That was a job overwhelmingly for the wealthy.”
Their first film together was Growing Up Female, which was made on a budget of $2,000 and was one of the first documentaries to explore the modern women’s movement. Frustrated by the number of distributors unwilling to show films about women, Reichert and Klein founded New Day Films, a distribution cooperative for documentary films.
Describing the film (her senior year student project at Antioch College) in her own words, Reichert said: “It’s not a radical movie or a militant movie. It just looks at how women see themselves and what are the social institutions that are affecting us. It’s the kind of film you want audiences who are not feminists, who are not in the women’s liberation movement, to see and think, ‘Oh, gosh, that’s me, too. That’s happened to me.’”
Reichert and Klein went on to make Methadone: An American Way of Dealing in 1974, which was followed by Union Maids, about three women who served as labour organisers during the Great Depression. They also explored the Red Scare backlash of the 1950s in Seeing Red. Recent works include 2006’s A Lion In The House, 2012’s Sparkle, and 2016’s Making Morning Star. Reichert is survived by her daughter and grandchildren.
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