Come for a conversation and reception with celebrated Ohio documentary filmmaker Steven Bognar about the relationship between documentary film and civic action. With life partner Julia Reichert, Bognar co-directed the Academy Award winning feature documentary American Factory (2019, Netflix), the first film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. The film is set in post-industrial Ohio, where a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America. Hear Bognar's stories about making this film, and what it meant to take these Ohio workers with Julia and him on the red carpet at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. The event will also feature selections from Bognar's many other works.
Steven Bognar is an Oscar and Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker based in Southwest Ohio. His films, including those made with his late partner Julia Reichert, have screened at major film festivals, including Sundance, Telluride, and South by Southwest, and on PBS, HBO and Netflix. Two of his films have been nominated for Academy Awards and two for Peabody Awards. Bognar has guest lectured at Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities, and has presented master classes in documentary filmmaking at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. Steven Bognar served on the faculty of Antioch College and Wright State University, and worked for 15 years as an artist-in-residence with the Ohio Arts Council. In his younger years, Bognar worked as a dishwasher, bus boy, apple orchard farmhand, office temp, legal proofreader, delivery driver and movie projectionist.
Sponsored by the Department of Media, Journalism & Film, the Menard Family Center for Democracy, the Freshman Film and Video Living Learning Community, and Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum.
