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JULIA REICHERT AND THE WORK OF TELLING WORKING-CLASS STORIES

Patricia Aufderheide

It was the Year of Julia: in 2019 documentarian received lifetime-achievement awards at the Full Frame and HotDocs festivals, was given the inaugural “Empowering Truth” award from Kartemquin , and saw a retrospec- tive of her work presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (The International Documentary Association had already given her its 2018 award.) Meanwhile, her newest work, (2019)—made, as have been all her films in the last two decades, with —is being championed for an Academy Award nomination, which would be Reichert’s fourth, and has been picked up by the Obamas’ new Higher Ground company. A lifelong socialist- feminist and self-styled “humanist Marxist” who pioneered independent social-issue films featuring women, Reichert was also in 2019 finishing another , tentatively titled 9to5: The Story of a Movement, about the history of the movement for working women’srights. Yet Julia Reichert is an underrecognized figure in the contemporary documentary landscape. All of Reichert’s films are rooted in Dayton, Ohio. Though periodically rec- ognized by the bicoastal world, she has never been a part of it, much like her Chicago-based fellow Julia Reichert in 2019. Photo by Eryn Montgomery midwesterners: (, Steve James, Maria Finitzo, Bill Siegel, and others) and Yvonne 2 The Documentary Film Book. She is absent entirely from Welbon. 3 Gary Crowdus’s A Political Companion to American Film. Nor has her work been a focus of very much documentary While her earliest films are mentioned in many texts as scholarship. Early in her career, Reichert is mentioned in part of a movement, her career as a whole has been largely passing as a rising woman filmmaker making oral histories ignored by scholars of left-wing filmmaking such as Thomas of past (often defeated) political struggles—acategoryto Waugh, Patricia Zimmerman, and Michael Chanan. There which she is often consigned in the critical literature—when are interviews with Reichert from the early phase of her ca- sheappearsatall,asshedoesinthe1993 edition of Erik 1 reer in scholarly publications, but not analyses of the work Barnouw’s Documentary. Her early work (only) is referenced 4 itself, and the later years are fairly universally ignored. but not analyzed in Jonathan Kahana’s The Documentary A rare exception, for her early work, was Jump Cut,aninde- Film Reader, and none of her work is cited in Brian Winston’s pendent scholarly journal based (significantly) in Chicago and whose audience includes “radicals interested in culture,” Film Quarterly,Vol.73,Number2,pp.9–22, ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630. as its masthead has always proudly declared. © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please ’ direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through Julia Reichert s career and aesthetic decisions can be best the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www. understood through an approach that looks at her cultural ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2019.73.2.9. and production contexts, examining how her films intersected

FILM QUARTERLY 9 with their political times, her own life trajectory, and the com- 5 mercial realities of the filmmaking marketplace.

Ordinary Lives, Working Realities

Reichert’s body of work is characterized by consistent themes across fifty years of nonstop production. They are films about the lives of ordinary working people in America, often women, usually set in the Midwest. The films are grounded in deep research and driven by a commitment to social justice. They methodically explore a situation or issue, with close, re- spectful observation and interviews that are always conducted by Reichert herself. These films were often designed within a Early days: Julia Reichert and Jim Klein. context of social movements and intended to have demonstra- ble effects in the world. Reichert also participated in creating The Film Fund, a The films have evolved stylistically with her increased foundation established to channel money from trust-fund mastery of her craft and the contributions of her filmmaking kids to social-issue filmmakers, and was part of the ten-year partners, Jim Klein and Steven Bognar. Her career has been struggle by documentary filmmakers in 1978–88 to create marked by constant learning by doing, starting with a film public television’s producing wing, the Independent Televi- 10 completed with only rudimentary training and advancing in sion Service (ITVS). She has remained an activist in sup- sophistication to include projects that incorporate an interac- port of documentary film on public television, including tive documentary (Reinvention Stories, 2013–14)andimpact the period 2013–15, when the documentary series Indepen- 6 modules (A Lion in the House, 2006). Throughout, the tone dent Lens and POV were threatened with removal from the has been consistent: unpretentious, earnest, elegant but clear. core PBS schedule. Although Reichert came of age when cinéma vérité was With Klein, she built a film program at Wright State Uni- dogma and interviews were unfashionable, she opted early versity in Dayton to teach first-generation students how to 7 for a social-inquiry approach. Only later, with more afford- make films. In conjunction with Dayton’smunicipalgovern- able technology, did she begin to use more cinéma vérité ap- ment, she launched an apprentice system that trained many proaches. The dignity of her films’ working-class characters Ohioans for careers in film and television. The project started and the struggles they confront in achieving that dignity are with fiction feature films she produced and/or directed while always in the front of the frame. teaching at Wright State, and has created a pipeline of work Reichert has also made history as a creator of film insti- and enabled film productions to come to Southwest Ohio for tutions. From the start, she understood her work as build- locations and lower costs. ing alternative institutions. She was a cofounder (with Reichert has always had at least one codirector throughout Klein) of New Day Films, originally created to distribute her career, but her collaborators agree that she is the driving her first film, Growing Up Female (1971), as well as the force, identifying the subject and story of the film. Between work of young filmmakers Liane Brandon and Amalie 1971 and 1984, she made films as a team with partner Jim Rothschild, and Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill shortly Klein, whom she met, fittingly, in a film class at Antioch Col- 8 thereafter. New Day was a pioneer among independent lege. Reichert came from a working-class family and Klein distributors for incorporating outreach strategies into distri- from an upper-middle-class one, but they shared a burning bution long before there was a field of “impact producers,” commitment to social justice. Klein recalled: “It was always and one of the first to educate its own consumers—academics an all-out partnership—everything from interview questions and organizers—on how to leverage their institutions’ resour- to how we covered things. The big thing we had together ces to rent and buy New Day films. Drawing on this experi- was this sense of social commitment and being part of a large ence, and as part of her organizing work, Reichert also social movement. It made you believe you could do things be- wrote what might be the first how-to book on independent yond what you thought you could do.” 9 self-distribution and outreach. New Day became a thriving Their relationship broke up in the wake of the release of collective that continues to be a major distributor for indepen- Seeing Red (1983), although in 1985 they took a shared pro- dent filmmakers. fessorial job to start the Wright State film program. This was

10 WINTER 2019 also a moment when Reichert decided to go on her own, to marked by documentary triumphs such as Harlan County experiment with fiction film (Emma and Elvis, 1992), and to U.S.A. (, 1976)andThe Times of Harvey become a producer for other documentaries and fiction films. Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984). Bognar and Reichert’sfilmsare Indeed, it was in this producer role, Steven Bognar noted, strongly character-driven narratives within a social con- that she became known as the “godmother of the indie film text, as Bognar noted: “We’re not under the illusion that 11 movement.” Klein also developed a thriving independent movies can change the world, but they can help people solo career, including as a sought-after editor. and movements change the world by creating moments of It was also in this period that she met Bognar, a visual intimacy with people you might never meet otherwise.” artist and Ohio native, at a screening of Gregory Nava’s El And although their films are now produced with highly Norte (1983). Over the next few years, and in spite of the commercial entities, as Reichert points out, they still have fact that Steven was almost a generation younger, they be- a distinctively independent character: “Despite notes from came life partners—but not filmmaking partners until HBO, , or Higher Ground, our films do not 12 1997,whentheybeganworkonALionintheHouse.Bog- ever have one main character, or even the usual three. nar describes their partnership as one of equals. He is We listen to a chorus of voices, go for real diversity. And likely to do most of the cinematography, although Reich- we’ve never made a celebrity film.” ert also shoots, but they share in the decisions. In the edit- The MoMA retrospective, organized by the Wexner ing room, they may disagree, but he acknowledges that Center for the Arts and years in the making, grew out of “her story instincts are so much better than mine, I can be a joint commitment by Klein and Bognar to celebrate persuaded.” Reichert’s career. Both of them profess great satisfaction Bognar has brought a strong cinematic vision to the in the attention she is getting, while confident in their work but still adheres to the visual legacy of the politi- own essential roles in her filmmaking trajectory. “I’mso cized era in which Reichert launched her career—an era happy she’s finally getting a day in the sun,” Bognar said.

Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, at work on ALionintheHouse. Photo by Scott Saunders

FILM QUARTERLY 11 “Butthatdoesn’t take anything away from the fact we parallel to consciousness-raising itself: a challenge to women’s made these films, or that Jim and she made the early films representation under patriarchy, an assertion of the value of together. All these films have been true collaborations in women’s personal experience as political, and an illustration every sense.” of a nonhierarchical relationship between maker and inter- 14 Both men agree that her tenacity, even obsession, is a key viewee. Other scholars critiqued this mode, pointing to the assetthatReichertbringstocollaborations.Bognarsaid, lack of perspective in using interviewees, who may have been “We’ve done absurd things, where we camp out in front of exceptions rather than typical, as the sole interpreters and 15 someone’s house for hours, with home-baked cookies, hoping representatives of history. Bill Nichols cited Reichert’s to spend five minutes with someone. I can’timaginedoing films (among others) as exemplifying the limitations of this that with anyone but Julia.” Klein added, “Julia always had kind of historical documentary, which can “forfeit an the willingness to go out on the end of the limb and do what- independent explanatory frame for the one provided by ever needed to be done.” participant-witnesses themselves,” with implications for 16 historical understanding. B. Ruby Rich described it acerbi- “ ” The Reichert and Klein Years cally as soothsayer cinema, in which the filmmaker cap- tures the emotional commitment of the viewer with Reichert and Klein began making films as college students, attractive and engaging characters rather than situating and then as ardent members of the left-wing New American them in a historicopolitical context; she also argued, with Movement (NAM). They saw themselves and their films as Nichols, that the approach transferred authority from the 17 just one part of building a new world, within a passionately filmmaker to the speaker. Mainstream critics sometimes dedicated community (including their communal house- used this argument against the early work. For instance, hold). Their films got incrementally more complex as they Janet Maslin wrote about Seeing Red: “[The filmmakers’] learned. Klein recalled: “After the first film, we were always rapport with their subjects is far more impressive than riding a tiger. One of our strongest talents was our stubborn- their ability to analyze or organize the information they 18 ness. We were not willing to give up.” have obtained.” This critique did not, however, affect This was a time when public television still welcomed reception (which is what mattered to Reichert and Klein); one-off documentary productions. Their productions took both recalled that socialist-feminist activists in particular years to make and eventually, upon nearing completion, found the films energizing and inspiring. could count on finding a home on PBS. It was also a time Growing Up Female seems charmingly understated now, when independents paid little or no attention to copyright is- but caused explosive reactions, mostly from men, in 1971. sues, which lowered costs. Their films wove popular music In fifty minutes, and with only the sparest of narration, the into soundtracks. They never even thought of licensing it, film combines interviews and verité footage to provide a nor did they suffer any consequences. Those were the days composite portrait of expectations for women’s lives. It before digital distribution and large media companies’ in- opens with little schoolchildren in sex-segregated play, and creased vigilance and intimidation, leading to indies adding moves from tween tomboy exuberance (mom disapproves) huge budgets for copyright clearances. (Since filmmakers to young womanhood to a meditative interview with a adopted a best-practices code clarifying their access to copy- stay-at-home mom who quietly muses on the opportunities right law’s fair use doctrine in 2005, which led to greater shegaveuptogetmarriedandhaveafamily. access to material and lower costs, their confidence in copy- The film grew out of Reichert’s dorm experience at Anti- 13 right law has been restored. ) “I’m not sure we even knew och, where she first heard about something called “women’s about licensing music,” Reichert said. Educational distribu- liberation.” Although her then-boyfriend shook her by the tion could still fully repay investment in production, because shouldersinarageforevenusingtheterm,Reichertand of the ample budgets of Cold War–era universities, espe- others persisted and set up a consciousness-raising group. cially public universities, and the still-high rental and sales Typical for the time, this simple act of sharing their experien- prices for 16mm film in the era before VHS, DVD, and ces instigated an understanding of systemic oppression, which streaming. in turn led to her capstone project for graduation, Growing Their work was part of a documentary trend in the Up Female. With Klein, Reichert had filmed over spring 1970s–1980s that pioneered feminist, left-wing, oral-history break; all the interviewees appeared in the film, and their documentary. Julia Lesage found this approach a compelling shooting ratio was painfully parsimonious, at two to one.

12 WINTER 2019 people started shouting at each other. At one point, the men won’t sit down and shut up. One woman said, “There’s a room down the hall, we can lock the door, let’s go there, we need to talk about this without men.” So we did. I got a postcard a month later, from Athens, which said, “We decided that night to meet the next week and then we met the week after that, and now we decided to start the Athens Women’sCenter.” Reichert faced hostile male hecklers in places like Norman, Oklahoma, and Tallahassee, Florida. But dozens of women’s centers were also established. Klein recalls: “We had no sales for the first two years, but had sixty rentals a month. It was rentals because women, as teachers, had the power to rent but not buy films; the buyers The poster for Growing Up Female. were all men.” As a measure of how astonishing this seem- ingly simple film was at the time, when PBS aired the film They recruited their cinematographer sight unseen from on its national schedule in 1974, it insisted on a male panel a nearby university that had a camera. (He refused to take afterward for “balance.” In 2016, Growing Up Female was direction from Reichert, and would listen only to Klein.) entered into the National Film Registry at the Library of Describing it now as “astep-onefilm,” Reichert sees it as Congress. much simpler than her later work: “It doesn’tofferrevolu- The fact that Growing Up Female was such an immediate tion, or women’s liberation. It just lets you walk through your success on an infinitesimal budget, and that from the start own life and say, ‘Oh yeah, that’showIfelt.’ It’s like a click, Reichert and Klein were able to keep all the profits by form- click, click, then snap.” ing New Day Films, was career defining. It meant that from The film was in hot demand from the moment they be- then on, at least for a while, the filmmakers could self-fund gan distribution through New Day Films. It tracked the the start of each new project. beginning of the women’s movement uncannily. “At first Reichert and Klein’s second film, Methadone: An American we got Radcliffe, Barnard, U of Chicago, then the state Way of Dealing (1974), is still highly topical, for it documents schools, U of Penn, and Ohio University,” Reichert re- acommunity’s efforts to manage drug addiction. Using called. “Then we started getting Catholic schools, and scenes and interviews from a methadone clinic in Dayton, schools in the South. It was the more educated and upper along with historical montage, expert interviews, and scenes class first. That was an indelible experience for me. It from a drug-free rehab clinic in Washington, DC, the film guided me in [future] filmmaking. . . .You make the film argues that methadone is an attempt to pacify and manage andyougetittoyouraudience.” alienation. The film is structured, like Growing Up Female, Reichert and Klein dedicated the next year to outreach as a social inquiry, with Reichert on camera asking the ques- and distribution. It was all DIY. They learned how to run an tions in an empathic, nonjudgmental way, as a stand-in for offset printer in order to make their own posters. Reichert the viewer. With evidence from a Washington, DC–based went on the road with their one print of the film, lugging the communal rehab center that eschews drugs altogether, the 16mm reels in their metal case and sleeping on couches. She film presents a still-topical argument: that the more effective still recalls one exemplary incident: approach to addressing drug addiction focuses on building community and local economies. The film was economical In Athens, Ohio, a college town—Ohio University—afew in both design and budget, costing only $11,000. women set up a screening in an auditorium. We had a pretty big audience, both men and women. I got on the Methadone is notable not only for its investigative work — stage with the host after the film. Women started saying, and frank interviews Reichert and Klein get a clinic “Oh my god, this is my life,” sharing their experience. employee to talk about addiction among employees, for Some guy stood up and said, “You ought to make a film instance—but also because it specifically locates drug use about men, because men are oppressed, too.” The women as an outcome of alienation and injustice. From its base in said, “Shut up and sit down.” And they wouldn’t, and one methadone clinic in Dayton, the film exposes deep

FILM QUARTERLY 13 Astonishingly, even though the women they interviewed made overt references to the Communist Party’snewspaper The Daily Worker, Reichert and Klein claim they were un- aware of the women’s CP (Communist Party) membership. They faced criticism from filmmakers, historians, and critics for this omission, but always noted that the women had never mentioned their CP membership; it is also possible that if they had, the still-virulent anticommunism of the time would have prejudiced the utility of the film. Mogulescu was an early video adopter. He convinced them to shoot in video, a suggestion Reichert and Klein liked for its supposed thriftiness. Video permitted them much longer interview times, but in the end any cost saving was lost in the expense of transfers to film. They worked quickly, shooting Methadone: An American Way of Dealing. the three interviews in three days. The editing interweaves these interviews according to chronology and themes. The institutional corruption. Thomas Waugh celebrated the women’s stories make vividly clear the wretched working film for its close listening to working-class voices, which conditions of laborers, especially women such as the laundry he saw as a welcome step in a radical film movement too workers with whom the African-American organizer Sylvia 19 oftenobsessedwithitself. Woods worked. Union Maids shows that women were critical Reichert and Klein believed that this film, like Growing to the labor movement and that the labor movement was Up Female, would easily find an audience through organizing critical to improvements in public welfare in general, and for networks. They were wrong. A screening at the Whitney womeninparticular. Museum of American Art was picketed by both black and Despite its primitive technology and short length (fifty white addicts, who, Reichert believes, were recruited by minutes), Union Maids got wide theatrical screening in twelve methadone producers. But the real problem may have been cities and immediately charmed reviewers. The relatively the lack of a movement: “It was a sobering learning, the op- murky video-transfer images struck audiences and reviewers posite of Growing Up Female. We didn’t stop and think about as aesthetically appropriate. In ,Vincent the size or power or reach of a movement for drug-free alter- Canby wrote that the directors “never get in the way of their native treatment programs. Really, it was just in a few cities. subjects and never put words in their mouths. They don’t And we also didn’t quite realize the amount of controversy have to. Sylvia, Stella and Kate are three naturals, characters about methadone, and [the] big powerful supporters, in med- whose hearts and minds leap off the screen with a kind of 20 ical and research communities. There wasn’tacommunityof grace and nobility.” To Reichert’s astonishment, the film organizers like with the women’s movement, which was like wasnominatedforanAcademyAwardintheBestDocu- a brush fire.” It did eventually get on PBS, with an update on mentary Feature category: “We found out when reporters some of the characters that PBS requested. showed up at our doorstep with cameras.” At the time, the Their next film, Union Maids (1976), was elegantly simple Academy was heavily weighted toward men and toward in design and very low-budget at $13,000, drawn mostly coastal professionals; Barbara Kopple was one of the few from their own savings, with $1,000 contribution from a women in the documentary division. left-wing foundation. Union Maids was brought to Reichert It did not win. Reichert had paid so little attention that and Klein by producer Miles Mogulescu, a fellow NAM she did not even dress up for the occasion. Her aspiration member who wanted to produce a film about three women was never the Oscars: “I really thought Union Maids could union activists from the 1920s–1930s in Chicago, all of whose bring the women’s movement and labor movement into dis- oral histories were included in Alice and Staughton Lynd’s cussion, and it did happen to a degree. These women played Rank and File. Reichert and Klein embraced the idea. a role in [getting] working people a collective voice. Union They wanted to learn about organizing from their fore- Maids even gets into organizing tactics. It was designed as an bears, especially given the silence about the history of political organizing tool—maybe not wisely, but it was.” The film’s and labor organizing during their upbringing in the 1950s. criticism of the AFL-CIO’s leader, George Meany, led labor

14 WINTER 2019 Fortunately, Klein said, the funding—amplified by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and from a clutch of private foundations—was enough to hire filmmaking consultants. “That was the first time we worked with professionals and really learned our craft,” he said, recalling how they fell into such an editing morass that they had to learn how to accept suggestions from con- sulting editors. “Finally we went back and read the NEH proposal, and I thought, ‘This actually sounds like a pretty good film,’” Klein recalled. “Andweusedthatstructure to make the final version.” The resulting film, Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983), reflected the con- cerns of the waning New Left, as Reagan’s 1980 election empowered neoconservatives. “I think this was the last moment when this film could be made and seen,” Reichert speculated. The film again mixes historical montage, backed with classic labor songs and a performance by Pete Seeger, and Reichert’s interviews—frank, warm, curious, and respectful, but asking tough questions that allowed her to be both aco- lyte and skeptic. Reichert played the role of a skeptical main- stream viewer. Why did these people join the CP? Why did they hide their membership? Did they ever see any spying? Why did they stay when rumors of Stalinism started? What happened to them when Khrushchev revealed the depth of Stalinism? What about the image of CP members as all work and no play? What about the reputation of the CP as Reichert with the women of Union Maids,atthefilm’s top-down and bureaucratic? premiere in Dayton, Ohio. Photo by Tony Heriza The directors deliberately focused on the rank and file, not the leadership. The film celebrates the activism of leadership to refuse to endorse it, but individual unions used ordinary people who fought for social change. They in- it extensively. It is still the film that people mention to Reichert clude a number of women, some of whom are sharply most often, usually because they saw it in a class. critical of misogyny in the Party. Rough-talking seaman After their belated discovery of the Union Maids women’s Bill Bailey has some hilarious comments, including his CP membership, Reichert and Klein could not stop thinking recollection of the desperately poor during the Depression about the long-suppressed history of the Communist Party who “didn’t know rheumatism from Communism.” Or- in America. They applied to the Carter-era National En- ganizer Dorothy Healey recalls her role as a CP leader: dowment for the Humanities and, to their surprise, got the “I was a little Stalin.” Several talk about the intensity of grant. “I think it was the Oscar nomination for Union Maids, the social life and the strength of community. Not one of and the fact that Barbara Kopple was on the [NEH] panel these rank-and-file folks ever saw any spying. Some lost that year,” Reichert said, to explain their success. The film faith, some lost jobs, some stayed in the Party after the was of a scope they had never before attempted. Meanwhile, revelations. Reichert discovered she was pregnant—a welcome fact that Again, Reichert and Klein had a hit. Seeing Red suc- the couple hid for as long as they could, afraid that the NEH ceeded from the start, with a six-week run in New York would withdraw the grant. Klein took the lead in produc- City and eight weeks in Berkeley, as well as showings in a tion during Reichert’s later pregnancy and after the birth of hundred other cities. It also got an Academy nomination, their daughter Lela Reichert Klein in 1979, but they worked and this time there were rumors it might win. Although it jointly to finish the film. did not, Reichert still remembers with fondness her sequined

FILM QUARTERLY 15 Reichert interviewing Pete Seeger for Seeing Red. Photo by Tony Heriza

tuxedo jacket, makeup session, and a written acceptance ALionintheHouse, sharply reveals class disparities in access speech, just in case. Eventually, PBS aired it. to health care and the extraordinary challenges for any working family in health crisis in America, while both The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2009)andAmerican Fac- Under the Shadow of Neoconservatism tory are close-up portraits of American workers caught in Reichert’scareersinceSeeing Red has been spent under the slipstream of global trends. the ever-deepening shadow of neoliberal economics and Her films with Steven Bognar have left the public- neoconservative politics. In 1983, New American Move- television nexus behind as well. They have found production ment merged with the more centrist Democratic Socialist support from commercial cable, from equity investors—and, Organizing Committee (and eventually became Democratic with American Factory, from and the Obamas as Socialists of America), a moment Reichert still recalls as a well. With resources in the multiples of anything she crushing personal disappointment. The communal house- hadseeninthefirsthalfofhercareer,Reichert’swork hold, the shared optimism for fundamental social change, and with Bognar has become more aesthetically complex, with eventually her marriage all dissolved. She began to search for higher production values and faster production timetables. It and build community outside the once-encompassing world is also—partly in response to the imperatives of a more com- of the counterculture, although her nostalgia for the era re- mercial environment—less focused on explaining systemic mains. Her work has become more ethnographically oriented, forces. But it is no less grounded in socialist-feminist concerns. a rich series of explorations of ordinary working people’s lives In the twenty-first century, character-driven storytelling under late capitalism. has emerged as a preferred style for social-issue documen- Reichert’s values continue to infuse all her work. For in- tary. Organizations ranging from HBO to the Washington stance, the four-hour, two-part series on childhood cancer, Post to Netflix now compete for documentaries and major

16 WINTER 2019 film/television/streaming awards. They turn to reliable, award- ALionintheHousecreates a gigantic tapestry, featuring winning filmmakers, who offer compelling and socially mean- five families. It is an observational film narrated by both 21 ingful stories, to enhance their prestige and legitimacy. As Bognar and Reichert, in hushed whispers. It is as if the viewer documentary has lost its lackluster reputation and become is in the families’ homes and hospital rooms, watching with seen as more commercial, independent documentarians like the filmmakers. They are careful to introduce the children Reichert and Bognar have become bankable. first in a family setting, so as not to reduce them to patients. Reichert and Bognar’s first project together as codirectors The hospital personnel are faced with challenges far beyond was built on near-tragedy. As Reichert was in the midst of the medical, including economic and social disparities. Bognar building the program at Wright State and working as a recalls that at first he couldn’t keep the camera on during producer on fiction and documentary, in 1996 her family re- emotionally and physically stressful and intimate moments. ceived the terrifying news that Lela had Hodgkin’s disease; Reichert told him firmly, “They want someone to witness fortunately, she completely recovered. In the aftermath, and share and testify to what they went through. If we put Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chief oncologist, Dr. Robert the camera down, we’re shirking our duty.” Arceci, a fan of , approached Reichert to make The extraordinary intimacy and dignity of the film was a film about childhood cancer. celebrated in reviews and awards. Lion showed on PBS in With grants from ITVS, the Corporation for Public prime time on two consecutive nights, a major program- Broadcasting, the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- ming coup. The outreach was extraordinary. In Reichert’s tion, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and the NEA, the words, it was “the most precious collaboration we’ve ever four-hour series amassed a $1.4 million budget. Just as im- had” and became a model for future impact work. ITVS 22 pressive, outreach for the film was budgeted at $1.2 million. coordinated it all, beginning almost three years before the It was, for Reichert, “the film of our lives.” film’s launch, as together they built long-term relationships

Tim and Marietha Woods in A Lion in the House. Photo by Steven Bognar

FILM QUARTERLY 17 with twenty-one partners, including major medical asso- ciations and nurses’ organizations. Those partners were con- sulted at length about what issues were important to them, so that short modules could be tailored to their use: survivor- ship (kids need more aftertreatment care than many know), siblings (who carry a heavy burden), nurses’ relationships with the patients (many times, parents cannot be there, and nurses need to find appropriate boundaries), and, crucially, end of life. At that time, hospice care barely existed for children. Reichert and Bogner’s medical partners told them that Lion put pediatric issues on the agenda for many cancer organizations and medical facilities.

No sooner had Reichert and Bognar arrived at Sundance The Last Truck. Photo by Steven Bognar for the premiere of Lion than Reichert’s doctor called with news: she had been diagnosed with a rare version of non- premiere at the best venue in town. HBO paid for an elabo- Hodgkin’s lymphoma that was often fatal. Reichert left rate event, equipped with projection screens and sound abruptly after the premiere. In 2008, she was still in recovery, trucks from New York. It was a free screening, with free posttreatment, when the pair heard that Dayton’s GM plant popcorn, for a thousand auto workers. “It was a night people was closing. When GM denied them access, they started still talk about, and it made a big difference,” Reichert re- hanging out at the bar next to the plant. Over months, they called. “People were sobbing. It was such an important night. talked to the regulars, eventually showing them a twenty- People hadn’t seen each other since the plant closed. It was minute reel of interviews and winning the locals’ trust. like a recognition that somebody cared. Their experiences Reichert and Bognar were convinced to bring the project were validated. They were the protagonists in their story.” to HBO by Lisa Heller, who had once headed the public News that the factory that they had documented in The television anthology series POV.She greeted them at the first Last Truck had been bought by the Chinese glass company 23 meeting with the words, “Welcome to corporate media.” came while they were in the thick of making their Everything was different now. They got their first payment film about the 9to5 movement. But when the Dayton Devel- in a few days, unlike the slow public-television process, opment Coalition called Reichert and Bognar with a plea to and HBO executives told them to actually increase their make a positive film about the plant, in contrast to The Last proposed budget. Truck, they realized they could not say no. The Dayton However, HBO would also own the film outright, and municipal officials and plant owner envisioned a work-for- these were not filmmakers who were used to giving up con- hire job. But they insisted on independence: no money from trol. Also, HBO wanted a film ready for Labor Day, a great the plant or owners, complete access, and sole control of edit- political coup but one that would put them on a fast track ing. Surprisingly, the Chinese owner—himself someone who for the very first time. And HBO nixed their plan to frame prided himself on an aesthetic sense—agreed. the plant closing in a larger political/economic context. The This new film, American Factory, is a culmination of the social-inquiry mode was supplanted with human drama. community building and relationships to which Bognar, Sheila Nevins, the legendary head of documentary at HBO, Reichert, and Klein have devoted themselves over the years. gave them a key shaping insight. “She said, ‘Your film is about Their investment in Dayton, in factory workers’ stories, in what it’s like to have a job and to lose that job, boom,’”Reich- Wright State (two of the cinematographers came out of the ert recalled. “They didn’t beat us over the head [but] they program that Reichert and Klein founded), in family (Reich- helpedusseethewisdomoftheuniquecorewehad—the ert’s nephew Jeff is also a cinematographer), their history of very intimate, emotional sense of a community shocked and collaboration—this time including Chinese coproducers— beaten down.” The Last Truck provides a close-up, emotion- and their history of success with both public and commercial ally drenched experience of having a job and a whole way of television all came together to make it possible. life taken away. Reichert and Bognar shot regularly at the plant for well HBO mounted an Oscar campaign for the film, and over a year with no funding, building relationships and get- again, the film won a nomination but not the award. As ting favors of free shooting days from a former student and usual, Reichert’s high point was less glitzy: the film’sDayton their nephew. Then they created a wildly successful pitch reel,

18 WINTER 2019 drawing development funding first from Field of Vision and in the workplace), and with lyrical visual interludes featur- Catapult, then landing a million-dollar contract with Partici- ing machinery that would probably impress Dziga Vertov or pant Productions. Participant made critical interventions, Walter Ruttman. The cast of characters includes shop-floor which shaped the film. While Reichert had imagined a three- workers, American and Chinese managers—even the com- part miniseries, Participant argued for a feature to be com- pany chairman, who allowed extensive access that did not pleted in time for a Sundance premiere. And producer Diane always make him look good. After the unionizing effort be- Weyermannalsoprovidedanimportantinsightbysaying,as gins, for instance, he is seen asking his Chinese supervisor Reichert and Bognar were struggling with massive amounts with genuine perplexity, “We trusted our American supervi- of Chinese material: “You guys are American filmmakers, sors. Why didn’t they protect the company?” not Chinese filmmakers. We have to watch everything in One of the highlights of the film is the trip the American China through the lens of the Americans.” Reichert realized plant executives take to China over Chinese New Year. They she was right: “The strength of this movie is that it’sfrom are dazzled by the splendor of the event: the celebrations people who live near the plant and know these people deeply.” featured elaborately choreographed performances by Fuyao Finally, Participant understood the importance of outreach; employees, a group marriage, and a musical (the Americans’ the bulk of funding for American Factory’s outreach has come reciprocal performance is a lumbering, amateur version of from Participant. “YMCA.”) They are awed and intimidated by the cool effi- The film follows the first three years of the factory, cover- ciency of the factory. They talk to Chinese workers who ing its beginnings as a cavernous abandoned building, the admit they rarely see their children (“once a year, at New Chinese and American workers’ cross-cultural training and Year’s”) and who accept military-style regimentation at their experiences, the crisis when the American plant doesn’tbe- six-day-a-week, twelve-hour-a-day jobs. The camera lingers come profitable on the same schedule as other plants, the on the changing expressions on their faces, which richly tell sacking of the American executives and their replacement by the story. Chinese managers, and a failed unionizing attempt. The American Factory offers up an intimate, lived experience style is largely cinéma vérité, with some interviews (mostly of a cross-cultural process, a moment in the globalized

Rob Haerr and Wong He in American Factory. Photo by Ian Cook

FILM QUARTERLY 19 economy that illuminates otherwise puzzling questions: Reichert has also historically eschewed any designation Why did workers making $27,000 a year in hazardous con- as an artist. As she said, back in 1997, “I saw myself as an ditions vote down a union contract two-to-one? Why is it so activist who has skills to make film. I’m still a little un- hard for a standardized manufacturing process to be imple- comfortable with calling myself an artist. It denotes elit- mented in another culture? What do Chinese supervisors ism, a certain kind of individuality, as though you make 26 find so baffling about Americans? art for art’s sake, for yourself, not to make a difference.” The film was a hit at Sundance, winning the Best Docu- Bognar, who does embrace the role of artist, feels that the mentary Director award. Amid the acquisition frenzy, the social issues can make the artistry hard to see, even for directors decided to go with Netflix—not for the money, scholars and film critics: “We’re proud of the visual and which was comparable to other offers, but for Netflix’s sound design of the films. Craft matters to us hugely, and association with the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions, we work with the best people in the country. We mix our which took it on as their first project. Another factor in their films at Skywalker Sound. But because the content is so- decision was Netflix’s ability to provide one-click access for cial-issue-ish—kids with cancer, factories closing—that’s organizations using the film for noncommercial purposes. what people tend to talk about.” This time, the labor movement has embraced Reichert Similarly, the absence of scholarly attention to Reichert’s and Bognar’s work and supports legislation for the right body of work reflects a bias in documentary studies for the to organize. “The film just comes out at a time when it’s avant-garde, self-reflective, and reflexive—works, in short, being recognized that the democratic rights of working that echo the analytical curiosities of film scholars. Like other people are being trampled on, and not just here,” said makers of socially engaged documentary—including many Reichert. “We’re also building strong ties with think whose work appears on prestigious public-TV programs tanks, companies, business schools, law schools, manage- like POV and Independent Lens andonHBO,CNN,and ment schools.” The film has also sparked criticisms of the ESPN in general—Reichert is more likely to be discussed in harsh terms of manufacturing in China, mirroring recent 24 movements there for unionization.

Recognition and Invisibility

In spring 2019, the MoMA retrospective put Reichert’s career trajectory into perspective. It featured digitally remastered versions of Reichert’s films with Klein, as well those with Bognar: ALionintheHouse, The Last Truck,andAmerican Factory. For Reichert, Seeing Red was a high point. It was shown twice, once with a postscreening discussion led by doc- umentary legend . The discussion called atten- tion to the parallels between the anticommunist demonizing shown in the film and the totalizing government surveillance of today. stood up to praise the film from the back row. With such a record, why is this body of work, especially the later work, relatively unsung? Bognar and Reichert think geography is a factor, especially since they do not circu- late socially at major festivals and markets. “We’re in the Midwest. There’s an NY-LA-SF focus in film, and that’s OK,” said Bognar. This has also been the experience of Kartemquin Films, which despite a substantial body of work has historically lacked a national presence. Its star director Steve James is rarely associated with Kartemquin. In recent years, the media-arts production house has invested heavily “An activist who has the skills to make films”:Reichertat 25 in presence and press to combat its invisibility. work in 1973. Photo by Eddie Roberts. Courtesy of Dayton Daily News

20 WINTER 2019 journalistic articles that focus on the content and issues of her Julia Reichert Filmography work. This continues despite the fact that the work of inde- pendent, socially engaged filmmakers has evolved, often in • Growing Up Female (1970, with James Klein) conflict with U.S. public television, into its own distinct • Methadone: An American Way of Dealing (1975,with 27 genre. James Klein) Finally, what runs through all Reichert’s work is a posi- • Union Maids (1976, with James Klein) tive and expansive view of the culture of ordinary working • Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983, Americans, something rare in modern documentary history. with James Klein) After the early critiques of Reichert’s oral-history approach, • Emma and Elvis (1992,withStevenBognar) there was little discussion of films’ attention to class culture, • The Dream Catcher (1999, with Steven Bognar) ’ their ethnographic tracking of the role of work in people s • A Lion in the House (2006,withStevenBognar) “ ” lives, or their exposure of the hidden injuries of class • The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2009,with that surface within every crisis (from cancer to layoffs) and Steven Bognar) 28 exacerbate it. Labor issues have always been rare in docu- • Reinvention Stories (2012,withStevenBognar) mentary filmmaking, with a few historical exceptions. Class • 2012 29 Sparkle ( , with Steven Bognar) is nearly invisible as a theme at film festivals. Yet class as • No Guns for Christmas (2014, with Steven Bognar) culture has driven Reichert’s personal curiosity for her entire • Making Morning Star (2015, with Steven Bognar) lifetime, ever since she left her working-class family and • American Factory (2019, with Steven Bognar) moved to the Midwest for college. The success of American Factory, the awards, and the ret- rospective have given Reichert a rare opportunity to look Notes back at her career. She recalls the shock of becoming acutely aware in college of class as a cultural reality that separated her 1.EricBarnouw,Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction 1993 301–21 from her peers. She never lost her sense of a cultural “deficit,” Film (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . Barnouw’sstudywasoriginallypublishedin1974. her class anxiety, which gave her a familiar and comforting 2. Jonathan Kahana, ed., The Documentary Film Reader: History, rapport with her subjects: Theory, Criticism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Brian Winston, ed. The Documentary Film Book [M]ost of the time these were people I was comfortable (London: British Film Institute, 2013). with. Union activists, the old Communists, people whose 3. Gary Crowdus, A Political Companion to American film child was fighting cancer, the workers in the factory near (Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1994). my house. All through it, I felt strongly without articulat- 4. See also Alan Rosenthal, The Documentary Conscience: A ing it to myself that my own story—how I saw the world Casebook in Film Making (Berkeley: University of California and how the world had treated me—had to come out. Press, 1980), 317–29; and Alexandra Juhasz, Women of And it came out, through other people’sstories.ThingsI Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video (Minneapolis: know about and things I thought had to be said, by people University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 121–34. 5 whose lives had something in common with me. I was . The cultural-production approach is informed by Pierre ’ comfortable there, happy to be meeting these people, Bourdieu s look at how different power vectors shape, among other things, cultural expression. See Pierre Bourdieu, The spending hours and days with them. Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University That commitment continues. She and Bognar are almost Press, 1993). 6 finished with 9to5: The Story of a Movement, moving from . Reinvention Stories is no longer available in its original form, but format information is available at https://blog.reinven rough cut to fine cut and headed to release. Screened as a tionstories.org/about, and the short films are still available at work in progress at the MoMA retrospective, it shows the website of public radio station WYSO, www.wyso.org/ Reichert returning to the social-inquiry, oral-history ap- programs/community-voices. proach of the early years, now with the wealth of expertise 7. This Progressive Era phrase is one that Gordon Quinn, and aesthetic concern of her later work. whom Julia Reichert met early in her career through politi- cal activism, invoked and used as a defining methodology for The author’s gratitude goes to Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar, Kartemquin’s work. It is articulated in Gerald Temaner and and Jim Klein for extensive interview time, and to graduate Gordon Quinn, “Cinematic Social Inquiry,” in Principles of assistant Atika Alkhallouf for bibliographic research and Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings (The Hague: Mou- fact-checking. ton, 1974), 56–64.

FILM QUARTERLY 21 8. The process was described in Julia Lesage, Barbara Halpern A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Martineau, and Chuck Kleinhans, “New Day’sWay:Inter- Press, 2007), 100. view with Julia Reichert and Jim Klein,” Jump Cut 9 (1975): 18. Janet Maslin, “America’s Communists,” New York Times, 21–22, www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC09folder/ October 3, 1983, www.nytimes.com/1983/10/04/movies/ ReichertKleinInt.html. america-s-communists.html. 9. Julia Reichert, Doing It Yourself: A Handbook on Independent 19.ThomasWaugh,The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Film Distribution (New York: Association of Independent Documentary Film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Video and Filmmakers, 1977). Press, 2011), 99. 10. Patricia Aufderheide, The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capi- 20. Vincent Canby, “Film: Three Women Who Didn’tWaitfor talist Culture Beat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Lefty,” New York Times, February 4, 1977, www.nytimes. Press, 2000). com/1977/02/04/archives/film-3-women-who-didnt-wait-for- 11. All quotations and uncited information are drawn from a lefty.html. series of interviews by the author with Reichert, Klein, and 21. Patricia Aufderheide, “Mainstream Documentary since 1999,” Bognar between June 24 and July 20, 2019. in American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, 12. HBO, Participant Media, and Higher Ground are the ed. Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon (Chi- producers and distributors of Bognar and Reichert’srecent chester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell), 376–92.) films. 22. This and other information about outreach in Lion comes 13. From the late 1980s, when large media companies began to from Barbara Abrash’s extensive study on the film, ALionin zealously patrol their copyrighted material with the advent the House: A Content-Centered Outreach Strategy for Public of digital copying and distribution, filmmakers became ever Broadcasting (Washington, DC: Center for Social Media [now more wary of using unlicensed material, largely because Center for Media & Social Impact], n.d. [2008]), https://cmsim broadcasters were. But since 2005, when documentarians pact.org/resource/a-lion-in-the-house-a-content-centered-out created the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best reach-strategy-for-public-broadcasting/. Practices in Fair Use (available at https://cmsimpact.org/ 23. Lisa Heller is now cohead of HBO Documentary. documentary), filmmaking practice, including insurers and 24. “A Netflix Documentary Provokes Reflection in China: Les- broadcasters, has embraced fair use within the terms of the sons from ‘American Factory,’” The Economist, August 29, statement. See Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, “Docu- 2019, www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/08/ mentary Filmmakers: Pioneering Best Practices,” in Reclaim- 29/a-netflix-documentary-provokes-reflection-in-china. ing Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, 2nd ed. 25. This insight draws on my experience as a member of Kar- (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 94–108. temquin’s board of directors for seven years. 14. Julia Lesage, “Feminist Documentary: Aesthetics and Poli- 26.Juhasz,Women of Vision, 126–27. tics,” in “Show Us Life:” Toward a History and Aesthetics of 27. See Patricia Aufderheide, “Documentary Filmmaking and the Committed Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Metuchen, US Public TV’s Independent Television Service, 1989–2017,” NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984), 223–51. Journal of Film and Video 71,no.4 (Winter 2019). 15. Sonya Michel, “Feminism, Film and Public History,” Radi- 28. Reichert has referred to this phrase and the book by the same cal History 25 (1981): 47–61; Linda Gordon, “Union Maids: name in her interviews; see Richard Sennett and Jonathan Working Class Heroines,” Jump Cut 14 (1977): 34–35. Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Knopf, 1972). 16. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality (Bloomington: Indiana Uni- 29. See, e.g., my critique of festival programming: Patricia Auf- versity Press, 1991), 252. derheide, “SXSW: The Colors and Cultures of Documenta- 17. B. Ruby Rich, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Fem- ries,” Center for Media & Social Impact,March16, 2014, inist Film Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, http://archive.cmsimpact.org/blog/future-public-media/sxsw- 1998), 308–14. See also Pat Aufderheide, Documentary Film: colors-and-cultures-documentaries.

22 WINTER 2019