The Good Fight
In the first scene of Julia Reichert’s first film, Growing Up Female (co-directed with Jim Klein, 1971), a woman takes the hand of a young girl, walks her down the front steps of a house, and guides her along an Ohio sidewalk, the girl moving along as though in a trance, taking in the world in all its strangeness. On the soundtrack, Reichert’s voice narrates, “Society teaches us that when we reach the age of 21, we are free to live our lives as we choose. But by the time a woman comes of age, what choices does she really have?” The image of two women holding hands—a small gesture of solidarity—contrasted with this calm yet direct appraisal of the oppressive forces beyond their control neatly encapsulates the plainspoken yet sharply political sensibility that has defined Reichert’s nearly 50-year career, which is currently being celebrated in a retrospective co-presented by MoMA and the Wexner Center. (Some of the films were recently shown at Hot Docs in Toronto, where Reichert received the festival’s Outstanding Achievement Award.)
Since this first film, Reichert and her assorted collaborators (primarily Klein on her earlier films, Steven Bognar on her later) have consistently focused on issues of gender, evinces those traits that will mark all of Reichert’s work to come: an authoritative, common-sense approach conveyed via a humble Midwestern quality, a combination of political fervour and polite restraint. (That restraint is all the more impressive considering the loathsomeness of some of the film’s subjects: capitalism, a force that is never far off in any of Reichert’s films, is represented here by a louche advertising executive who smirkingly describes the strategies by which his industry manipulates women.) Further, the film’s seemingly unassuming opening foretells the unique gift that Reichert will bring to bear on all of her wide-ranging subjects: an ability to capture those moments of political consensus (and action) when hands are offered from one comrade to another across movements, identities, and generations in times of collective struggle.
