Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
A retrospective of acclaimed Academy and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Julia Reichert titled “Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film” begins its local premiere today, Nov. 21, at the Neon.
Curated and organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, the retrospective, which premiered in May 2019 at the Museum of Modern Art, is a celebration of the Yellow Springs filmmaker’s decades of work. The film series also traveled to Los Angeles, Houston, Minneapolis, Portland, Cleveland and Louisville among other cities before the coronavirus shutdowns.
“I’m deeply grateful to the Neon’s manager, Jonathan McNeal, for bringing this retrospective home,” said Reichert in a release. “It means so much to me to share these films again with Dayton audiences, many who weren’t even born yet when these films came out. New and beautiful 4K restorations of the four films I made with Jim Klein will play on the Neon’s screens, and they look amazing.”
“She has been a pioneer in filmmaking for 50 years,” McNeal said. “She is my professor, mentor and dear friend. Even though she’s such a good friend of mine, there is some work I have not seen and I’m anxious to see it on the big screen the way it was meant to be seen. We want to celebrate her lifetime achievement of being a woman in the film industry for 50 years. From the beginning of film, there have been women often unheralded but not many. For Julia to have made groundbreaking work for 50 years is pretty exceptional.”
On Nov. 21, Reichert, who taught film at Wright State University for 28 years, will discuss her career and origins. The event will also include a screening of “Growing Up Female,” Reichert and Klein’s groundbreaking 1971 documentary showcasing how girls and women are socialized. This film, Reichert’s senior project at Antioch College, was selected in 2011 by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry of historically significant films.
