“Tracing more than 100 years of history, the film is narrated by its residents in comical sequences: one interviewee rollerblades and reads the village’s water meters, another stands on his head in a breakdancing freeze,” the Wexner Center noted. “American history comes to life in their descriptions —ancestors’ settlements after slavery, a friendship with Coretta Scott King, Ohio’s Trail of Tears— among other more personal details of small town life. The wording of their recollections is imperfect, unsure, because they are all recreations of previous audio interviews. By interacting with their own recorded media, villagers uncover layers of time and storytelling.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Alvarez was inspired to create the film when she moved to Yellow Springs to teach media arts at Antioch College. She was particularly encouraged by Neenah Ellis, a local radio producer and former general manager of WYSO.
“I wanted to get to know the villagers,” said Alvarez in a press statement. “I had been doing talk therapy, psychoanalysis (my own)—this time I wanted to be the listener. Neenah Ellis, a local NPR producer, taught me how to give my full attention as a listener: don’t fidget or write, always make eye contact. I interviewed 12 residents who I found through one connection or another. They told me important (and some less ‘important’) histories, through their own remembering, however unsure. Later we staged visual scenes with this original audio. I like the way people talk. The honest voice makes good aesthetic material.”
The film features Yellow Springs residents Karen McKee, Paul Graham, Ellias Kelley, Rose Pelzl, Charles Arthur Williams, Shane Creepingbear, Anne Bohlen, Donna Denman, Jalyn Roe, Sumayah Chappelle, Rukiya Robertson, and Talon Silverhorn.
“It’s the clear sound of their voices, close in your ear, like God whispering to you,” Alvarez explained. “At the end of the film, a voice whose body we’ve seen, Talon Silverhorn is unnoticed; haunting around the film frame, not within it, instead behind, beside (in only the way that sound, and not vision, can be). This is a film of layers and ghosts. The recording is left.”
Credit: Charles Sykes
Credit: Charles Sykes
In addition “Julia’s Stepping Stones” is told in Reichert’s own words. Before her death in 2022 she recorded the story of how she became a filmmaker. Crafted by Steven Bognar of Yellow Springs, Reichert’s husband who shared Academy and Emmy Award honors for their documentary “American Factory,” the film premiered in April at the Full Frame Film Festival and marks the acclaimed duo’s final collaboration.
“I made this film alone but Julia and I always had high standards,” Bognar previously said. “I’ve been crafting it to the best of my abilities without her but it really is our final collaboration. It’s her voice in the film telling her story and with her writing. She wrote it and she’s the narrator. We kind of made the film together but I’m finishing it on my own.”
A longtime Yellow Springs resident, Reichert died Dec. 1, 2022, at 76 after battling a rare form of cancer for four and a half years. For 50 years, along with longtime collaborators Steven Bognar and Jim Klein, she illuminated humanity, particularly America’s working-class, across compelling themes of feminism, family, politics and economics. She was also a Wright State University professor of film production for 28 years.
Reichert grew up in Bordentown Twp., New Jersey, and was a 1964 graduate of Bordentown Regional High School. She graduated in 1970 from Antioch College with a degree in documentary arts. In addition to serving as professor emeritus of film production at Wright State, she co-founded New Day Films and Indie Caucus, an advocacy group ensuring the sustainability of documentaries on PBS. She also won the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award in 2018.
HOW TO GO
What: Unorthodocs Documentary Film Festival presents “Sound Spring” and “Julia’s Stepping Stones”
When: Saturday, Oct. 19. “Sound Spring” will be screened at 4:30 p.m. and “Julia’s Stepping Stones” at 7 p.m.
Where: Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, 1871 North High St., Columbus
Cost: $5-$10
More info: Visit wexarts.org/explore/unorthodocs-2024. Also, Alvarez and Bognar will attend their respective screenings.
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