Julia Reichert: Last News

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterTribeca Festival, the first in-person film festival in the U.S. since the pandemic, closed out its 20th edition with a tribute to a small town in the midwest.Filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, the Oscar winners behind “American Factory,” took the stage at New York’s iconic Radio City Music Hall to introduce their new documentary to a packed  vaccinated and mostly mask-less crowd.“We live in a small town in Ohio,” Bognar told the nearly 6,000 audience members in attendance.

Alison Herman TV Critic In 2020, the Academy Award for Documentary Feature went to “American Factory,” a portrait of a former General Motors plant taken over by Fuyao, a Chinese company that lowered safety standards and pay while fiercely resisting unionization. The Oscar was a victory not just for filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, but for the company that acquired “American Factory” as its first major feature: Higher Ground, the production outfit of former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama. The new Netflix series “Working” — subtitle: “What We Do All Day” — is inspired by the Studs Terkel book of the same name, published in 1974. But it’s also an informal sequel of sorts to “American Factory,” making many of the same points about the evolution of labor and the erosion of the middle class. “Working” also shares with its predecessor the same inherent tensions that stem directly from the Obamas’ sign-on. In the case of “Working,” the country’s 44th commander in chief is more than just a name in the credits; he’s also the narrator and on-camera host, reprising his dual role from prior Higher Ground series “Our Great National Parks.” That hands-on involvement only underlines the nature of “Working,” and Higher Ground projects as a whole. It’s a stand-alone political message that’s also a piece of a larger political legacy. Inevitably, the latter overshadows and complicates the former.

The documentary community is mourning one of its most treasured artists, filmmaker Julia Reichert. The Oscar-winning director of American Factory died Thursday night at her home in Yellow Springs, Ohio of a form of cancer affecting the bladder and other organs. She was 76.

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.

The vaccine-mandatory world premiere of Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place reopened Radio City Music Hall Saturday night for the first time since Covid hit.

Julia Reichert was at home — she lived in a commune of young political activists in Dayton, Ohio — on Feb. 21, 1978, when a local television reporter knocked on her door and asked her about the Oscar nomination her documentary “Union Maids” had just received.