A documentary by two Ohio filmmakers has been selected as one of 25 films that will be added to the 2011 National Film Registry. As WYSO's Emily McCord reports, it joins movies like Bambi and Forrest Gump as a film worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress.
"Growing Up Female" was shot in the Dayton area in 1971 by local filmmakers Julia Reichert and Jim Klein. It profiles six women during the women’s liberation movement about their lives and the impact of American culture on females at the time. Reichert says the movie was made as part of her senior project while she was a student at Antioch College.
“It's really exciting and amazing to know that this film that you made as a student got chosen as a culturally significant artifact of our country," says Reichert. "I kind of think that the film came out in the right moment in history and kind of rode a wave that we didn't quite realize was cresting yet, the wave of the women's movement."
"Growing Up Female" toured the country in the 1970s in church basements and libraries before it had wide distribution. Klein says it has earned its place in history by its different approach to story telling.
“It was a voice that needed to be heard. The mass media was doing nothing about the women's movement except about bra burning and such and here was a film that sort of spoke the stories that women had been experiencing for years,” says Klein.
Both Reichert and Klein went on to make academy award nominated films and are professors at Wright State University in Dayton. Growing Up Female was one of over 2000 films that were nominated for The National Film registry.