Local Documentarian Receives $50,000 Breakthrough Award & Grant

Chicken & Egg Pictures was founded in 2005 by Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger, and Judith Helfand. Their mission is create a space where women could learn from one another, test their limits, challenge the status quo, and break new ground both as artists and activists.  This year they launched the inaugural Breakthrough Filmmaker Awards.

The award responds to the reality that only a few women non-fiction directors in the U.S. are able to work full-time as independent storytellers. The program recognizes and elevates five mid-career women directors with unique voices who are poised to reach new heights and to continue to be strong filmmaker-advocates for urgent issues. This award consists of a $50,000 unrestricted grant and a year-long mentorship program tailored to each filmmaker’s individual goals

Yellow Springs resident Julia Reichert is one of  the five award winners. Here’s the official bio Chicken & Egg released as part of the awards:

Julia Reichert is a three-time Academy Award nominee for her documentary work. She lives in Ohio, and has chosen to focus on class, gender, and race in the lives of Americans.  Julia’s first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement.  It was recently selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  Her films Union Maids and Seeing Red were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary, as was The Last Truck, a short (co-directed with Steven Bognar) which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and on HBO.  Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production, made with Bognar) premiered at Sundance, screened nationally on PBS, and won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking.  She co-wrote and directed the feature film Emma and Elvis.  Julia is co-founder of New Day Films, the independent film distribution co-op.  She is author of “Doing It Yourself,” the first book on self-distribution in independent film, and was an Advisory Board member of IFP. Reichert is currently directing a film about the 9 to 5 movement, telling the stories of the millions of low wage, invisible women who populated the clerical pool, served coffee, and suffered sexual harassment before it was named.  In the 1970’s they gathered their courage and rose up against their bosses, large corporations, and institutions.  She’s also begun filming a verite follow-up to The Last Truck, chronicling the arrival of a new plant in her economically devastated Midwestern city.

 

On being named a winner, Julia shared, “It is such an honor to be among these engaged, brilliant, committed filmmakers. I have so much to learn! DEEP Thanks to the women of Chicken & Egg for their vision. We are all here at Sundance together, having great talks, sharing war stories.”