On December 18, 2024, the documentary “Julia’s Stepping Stones” arrives on Netflix, directed by Julia Reichert, protagonist of the project, together with her husband Steven Bognar, who worked on the editing and concluded the docufilm after the death of the director, which occurred in 2022 in cause of cancer. The documentary film shows personal photographs and film excerpts, highlighting the most significant milestones in Julia Reichert’s career. On the occasion of the release on Netflix, we discover something more about the protagonist of the documentary, starting from her career and then moving on to her private life.
Julia’s Stepping Stones: Who is Julia Reichert
Julia Reichert was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, on June 6, 1946 and was an American director, film producer, activist and documentary filmmaker for over 50 years of career. Her first radio experience dates back to 1968, when she began a professional and romantic relationship with Jim Klein and the latter proposed that she collaborate with WYSO FM, where she trained in editing, doing interviews but also in writing and screenwriting. The following year she got the first radio show she led on Klein’s radio station: it was a program dedicated to women, perhaps the first in the United States. Then, between 1970 and 1971, together with Jim Klein, she dedicated herself to a project linked to the modern feminist movement, “Growing Up Female”, selected in 2011 to be added to the National Film Registry and preserved in the Library of Congress.
Subsequently, Reichert and Klein decided to found their own production and distribution company and also involve the filmmaker Amalie R. Rothschild and the director Liane Brandon: in the end they all created the New Day Films cooperative together. After directing “Union Maids”, nominated for the Oscar for best documentary in 1978 and thanks to which she gained the attention of critics, the director produced and directed another documentary nominated for an Oscar (in 1984), namely “Seeing Red : Stories of American Communists”.
In 1997 she began working with her new partner Steven Bognar, starting with the film “A Lion in the House”, presented in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in the Best Documentary category and for which the director won the 2007 Primetime Emmy for “exceptional merit in non-fiction cinematography”. In 2010 a fourth Oscar nomination arrived with the documentary “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”, produced once again by the Reichert-Bognar couple and made by interviewing hundreds of workers. In 2019, Julia Reichert finally won her first Oscar for best documentary with “American Factory”, a film purchased by Netflix. Finally, it is interesting to remember that in 2019, the pair of directors made the film “9to5: The Story of a Movement”, based on the activist movement that inspired Jane Fonda for the production of the film “From 9 to 5… round the clock” and within which it is possible to see interviews done with the actress and other members of the 9 to 5 movement.
We remember that among the most important recognitions he received is the honor of the “Distinguished Service to Labor and Working-Class History from the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA)” for his commitment as an activist, and that he was Professor Emeritus of the Department of Theatre, Dance and Film at Wright State University in Ohio.
Julia Reichert: private life
Passionate about photography since childhood, Julia Reichert graduated from Bordentown Regional High School in 1964 and then enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs in 1964 before briefly abandoning her studies to participate in the “Summer of Love” of 1967. Afterwards, she resumed her academic path and graduated in 1970 with a thesis on the art of documentary. Reichert was married twice: the first to her colleague Jim Klein (the divorce occurred in 1986) and the second to Steven Bognar. In 2006 she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and in 2018 with bladder cancer, which led to her passing away on December 1, 2022 in Yellow Springs (OH) at the age of 76.
