Harlan County, USA

Director Barbara Kopple's look at a 13-month coal miners' strike that took place between 1973 and 1974 in Harlan County, KY, is one of the great films about labor troubles, though not for a sense of objectivity. Kopple lived among the miners and their families off and on during the four years the ...more

It's hard to believe that no great documentary films came out of the labor struggles of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, when unions such as the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and the United Mine Workers waged battles (sometimes literally) with management over basic issues that had been woefully neglected for many years. With Harlan County, USA, Barbara Kopple is able to distill many details of those earlier conflicts: the exploited workers, the bosses complaining about lost profits in the wake ...more