Julia Reichert, the documentary filmmaker who won an Oscar in 2020 with husband and directing partner Steven Bognar for American Factory, died last night of bladder cancer.
She was 75. A longtime resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio, her death was announnced by the area’s public radio station WYSO, where Reichert had previously hosted a weekly show.
With a focus on class issues, gender inequality, race and and the global economy’s impact on middle-class – and often Midwestern – America, Reichert’s films included such Oscar nominees as Union Maids (1976) Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983, with Jim Klein) and The Last Truck: Closing of A GM Plant (2009, with Steven Bognar), the latter film documenting the closing of a GM plant in the Dayton suburb of Moraine.
The couple’s Oscar came with American Factory, an in-depth look at the economic, social ramifications and culture clashes when that abandoned GM plant of The Last Truck was reopened by an anti-union Chinese billionaire.
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