Films & Events

Julia Reichert grew up a working-class girl in the 1960s, before the Women’s Liberation movement. She went on to become a pioneering Oscar & Emmy winning documentary filmmaker. Julia passed away in December 2022, but before her death, she recorded the story of how she became a filmmaker. Her partner in film and love, Steven Bognar, spent 2023 crafting Julia’s story into a film, which premiered in April at the Full Frame Film Festival. This short is the couple’s final collaboration. Julia's Stepping Stones ends with Julia making her first film, Growing Up Female, a landmark documentary which is on the National Film Registry and still in active distribution over 50 years later. Growing Up Female is the very first film of the modern women's movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them--teachers, counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage. It offers us a chance to see how much has changed--and how much remains the same. Purchased by more than 400 universities and libraries.

60 min.