Walker Art Center Presents Dialogue and Retrospective Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film
Independent documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert has been asking defining questions about workers’ rights, gender roles, taboos, and social change in America since the early 1970s. The pioneering Emmy Award–winner and three-time Academy Award–nominee comes to the Walker for a retrospective of her distinguished body of work. Reichert joins us February 28 for a screening of Growing Up Female and February 29 for the Walker Dialogue.
Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts with the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and curated by Wexner Center Director of Film/Video David Filipi. Special thanks to Chicken & Egg Pictures for its support.
Visit walkerart.org/cinema for tickets and details.
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Schedule of Events
Julia Reichert, The Last Truck, 2009. Image courtesy HBO
Double Feature: Union Maids and The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
With post-screening discussion
Thursday, February 20, 7 pm Free
Union Maids
Directed by Julia Reichert, Jim Klein, and Miles Mogulescu
Reichert interviews three “Union Maids” on their experiences as organizing women of the Labor movement. Fighting for humanitarian rights, these radical workers reflect on their lives filled with purpose and struggle. Frustrated by the privileged class’ participation in the women’s movement and caught up in race and gender discrimination within class warfare, their voices echo and contextualize many social justice issues today. 1976, DCP, 48 min.
The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant
Directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
Directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
Workers describe the death of a GM plant as the last truck comes down the line two days before Christmas in 2008. Interviews with talented, experienced tradespeople abandoned in the wake of change reveal the multifaceted impact of the loss of livelihood, purpose, and friends. Reichert chronicles the reopening of the plant a decade later in her new, Oscar-nominated film American Factory, screening on February 22. 2009, DCP, 40 min.
A conversation about the film with community engagement specialist Johnny Howard and labor organizer KaeJae Johnson, facilitated by Peter Rachleff of the East Side Freedom Library, follows the screening.
Johnny Howard moved to St. Paul in the early 1980s to work at the Ford truck plant. After plants had closed in Ohio, Michigan, California, numerous auto workers were displaced, Howard among them. Like many of them, he became an activist in UAW Local 879. Howard left the Ford plant before it closed in 2011 to become a community organizer in Frogtown.
KaeJae Johnson is an internal organizer with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. She grew up in Chicago and relocated from Milwaukee to Minnesota. Johnson has worked in the labor movement in Illinois and Wisconsin. She is a student at the New Brookwood Labor College, which meets weekly at East Side Freedom Library to advance the immediate and long-term goals of the labor movement. New Brookwood Labor College strives to address racial, economic, and social imbalances of power by educating workers into their class.
Peter Rachleff is the co-executive director of East Side Freedom Library. Rachleff earned his PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981, writing his dissertation about the interactions of white and African American workers in Richmond, Virginia, during and after Reconstruction. He taught at Macalester College from 1982 to 2012 and co-founded the East Side Freedom Library with Beth Cleary in 2013.
Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists
Directed by Julia Reichert and Jim Klein
Friday, February 21, 7 pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Reichert brings to light the forgotten history of Americans who joined the Communist Party and the high price many of them paid for their beliefs. Boldly countering traditional myths, the film presents engaging interviews and personal accounts that take on a new resonance in today’s charged political climate. 1983, DCP, 100 min.
Methadone: An American Way of Dealing
Directed by Julia Reichert and Jim Klein
Saturday, February 22, 2 pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
With tragic parallels to the current opioid crisis, this cutting-edge film follows the rise of heroin addiction in 1970s Dayton, Ohio. Interviewees share their experiences with flawed social services and treatment programs as well as society’s deeply isolating stigmas. Hope is found when a small handful of addicts address root causes of their abuse—unemployment, loss of purpose, and disintegrating culture—in an innovative program filled with social connection and shared responsibilities. 1974, DCP, 60 min.
Oscar nominated
American Factory
Directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
Saturday, February 22, 7 pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
In an abandoned General Motors plant in rural Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new auto-glass factory. Highlighting the relationships and conflicts between highly skilled Chinese technicians and formerly unemployed American auto workers, the filmmakers examine the complex future of labor in the United States. 2019, DCP, 115 min.
Julia Reichert’s Growing Up Female, 1971. Image courtesy the artist.
Growing Up Female + Post-Screening Artist Talk
Directed by Julia Reichert and Jim Klein
Friday, February 28, 7pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
“I wish every high school kid in America could see this film.” —Susan Sontag on Growing Up Female
Growing Up Female is the very first feature-length film of the modern women’s movement. Considered controversial and exhilarating on its release, the film examines female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, ages four to thirty-five, and the forces that shape them—teachers, counselors, advertisements, music, and the institution of marriage. A time capsule of a generation’s feminist issues, sometimes intersecting with race and class, the film illuminates a complex system of institutions upholding internal and external oppression. Directed by Julia Reichert and Jim Klein. 1971, DCP, 52 min.
Artist Talk by Julia Reichert: My Life in Film
The director takes us on an intimate, personal journey from a working class kid to a four-time Academy Award–nominated documentarian. Reichert shares her frank and often humorous origin story with personal photos and film clips that span her 50-year career. Her talk includes a special preview of 9to5: The Story of a Movement, which will have its world premiere at the upcoming South by Southwest Film Festival.
Please note: This screening of Growing Up Female with an artist talk by Julia Reichert replaced the previously scheduled work-in-progress showing of 9to5: The Story of a Movement. The world premiere of 9to5 was recently announced for this March at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Walker Dialogue: Julia Reichert with Eric Hynes
Saturday, February 29, 8 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Join Julia Reichert with Eric Hynes for a conversation about her documentary films, inspirations, and collaborations. Hynes is a New York–based film critic, reporter, and curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image. He has contributed to numerous major publications including the New York Times, Film Comment, Rolling Stone, and Reverse Shot.
Featured Playlist: Short Films by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
February 1–29
Bentson Mediatheque, Free
Available throughout February in the Bentson Mediatheque, this playlist showcases short films by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar in conjunction with Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film.
Sparkle
Legendary dancer Sheri “Sparkle” Williams—one of the few outside of New York to receive the prestigious Bessie Award for Individual Performance—suffers her first serious injury in nearly 40 years. As her 50th birthday approaches, she is forced to consider whether she has the will to return to the stage. 2012, 18 min
Making Morning Star
Experience the joys and challenges of developing a new American opera. Made in Cincinnati, the film captures the delicate balancing of personalities during intense artistic collaboration. Will the opera be ready on time? 2016, 37 min.