Oscar-Profitable ‘American Manufacturing unit’ Filmmaker Was 75 – Deadline

Julia Reichert, the documentary filmmaker who gained an Oscar in 2020 with husband and directing associate Steven Bognar for American Manufacturing unit, died final evening of bladder most cancers. She was 75.

A longtime resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio, her dying was announnced by the world’s public radio station WYSO, the place Reichert had beforehand hosted a weekly present.

With a concentrate on class points, gender inequality, race and and the worldwide financial system’s impression on middle-class – and sometimes Midwestern – America, Reichert’s movies included such Oscar nominees as Union Maids (1976) Seeing Crimson: Tales of American Communists (1983, with Jim Klein) and The Final Truck: Closing of A GM Plant (2009, with Steven Bognar), the latter movie documenting the closing of a GM plant within the Dayton suburb of Moraine.

The couple’s Oscar got here with American Manufacturing unit, an in-depth have a look at the financial, social ramifications and tradition clashes when that deserted GM plant of The Final Truck was reopened by an anti-union Chinese language billionaire. The movie gained the Academy Award for Finest Characteristic Documentary.

In an interview with WYSO final 12 months, Reichert mentioned, “I grew up, I got here of age within the ’60s. Tens of millions of us noticed racism, noticed U.S. domination all over the world. Imperialism. Noticed big inequalities class sensible. We mentioned the system’s not working and we grew to become, in some broad sense, revolutionaries. Not that we needed to assault the White Home however we actually needed to vary society.”

Along with filmmaking, Reichert was a Professor of Movement Footage at Wright State College outdoors Dayton.

She is survived by Bognar, daughter Lela Klein Holt, three brothers, two grandchildren and a nephew.