Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert dies at 76

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert, whose films transgressed the complex themes of race, class and gender died on December 1. She was 76 at the time of her death.

A renowned filmmaker whose movie “American Factory” made Juklia one of the favourites among filmmakers who explored the themes of social malaise while hitting at the belt with cinematic conformity.

As per sources, Julia died on December 1, after a long battle with cancer. She was diagnosed with stage four urothelial cancer in April 2018.

Nicknamed as “godmother of American independent documentaries,” Julia told the stories of ordinary Americans, from autoworkers dealing with both plant closures (2009’s “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”) and foreign i9nvestors (2019’s “American Factory”), to members of the American Communist Party (1983’s “Seeing Red”) to female labor activists in the 1930s (1976’s “Union Maids”).

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In her five decades of filmmaking career, Reichert won two Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for four Oscars, winning one with her partner Steven Bognar for “American Factory” in 2020. She quoted “The Communist Manifesto” in her speech, saying “things will get better when workers of the world unite.”

Reichert, who was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and raised in Bordentown and Long Beach Island with her three brothers, discovered her voice as a filmmaker at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she began her long residency.

Her first film, "Growing Up Female," was a 49-minute student film made for $2,000 with then-partner Jim Klein that examined the lives and socialisation of six women ages 4 to 35.