Julia Reichert, professor emerita at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, is the recipient of the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award for 2018. Past recipients of this award include Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Robert Redford, Ken Burns, and Jacques Cousteau. Professor Reichert will be presented with the award during a December 8 ceremony in Los Angeles.
Reichert has been a filmmaker and a leader of the American documentary film community for the past 50 years. She has won various awards for her films including a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking as well as the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and Digital Media, both for her film A Lion in the House. She has been nominated for an Academy Award three times; for Union Maids in 1977, Seeing Red in 1984, and The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant in 2010. She was the associate producer of Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2014. In 2011, her film Growing Up Female was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
For 28 years, Reichert served as a professor of film production at Wright State University in the department of theatre, dance, and motion pictures. She is the co-founder of New Day Films, a democratically run documentary film distribution cooperative. She is also the co-founder of Indie Caucus, the action group working to keep the documentary form alive and well on the Public Broadcasting System. Additionally, she is a member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy.