Harlan County, U.S.A.

Harlan County, USA is a 1976 American documentary film covering the "Brookside Strike" a 1973 effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy Awards.

It was directed and produced by filmmaker Barbara Kopple, then early in her filmmaking career. A former VISTA volunteer, she had worked on other documentaries, especially as an advocate of workers' rights.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The film is a great example of the "social documentary", where the world around the film crew is physically recorded, with a social and/or environmental focus. This film bypasses the usual narration for real sound and dialogue, and evocative music to add to the background of the events. Hazel Dickens did a great job with the haunting surreal nature.
 * 2) Adding to the above pointer, the documentary doesn't shy away from the harsh working conditions of the strikers or the heated emotions that surround their battle for better wages and working conditions. There's picketing and injustice and real violence of the labor struggle sort. At times, it nearly feels like the viewer's actually there with the workers and in their lives. The documentary is that convincing. This work holds no punches back.
 * 3) Despite the film being brutally honest in harsh working conditions, there's never a dull moment in the work and it's endlessly rewatchable.
 * 4) Though the documentary is mainly about a year long coal miner's strike in Kentucky, it also portrays some additional themes within the work, adding to the "never a dull moment" pointer.
 * 5) It also manages to be a story of the people all given their due as irrepressibly unique individuals and yet connected in their commonalities all the same. As a result, it's surprisingly very inspirational, and a couple of viewers may be inspired to take on the corrupt - since working people do have tremendous bargaining power, if they stay resilient and united.
 * 6) It's also a story about music, the songs to which the people, places and the struggles give birth and how strongly linked they are. The music used in the film was considered integral to conveying the culture of the miners. It reflected the culture of the people of Harlan County and showed the power of folk music that was a living part of their culture. Their stories were often told through the songs.
 * 7) The portrayal of the grotesque power of monopoly capital, along with their sheer nastiness and lack of basic humanity is clear and indisputable.
 * 8) There's quite a bit of strong women present in the work and they not just background people -- they play an actual pivotal role in the story.

Trivia

 * Director Barbara Kopple initially began the project documenting a union reform movement called Miners for Democracy that hoped to oust corrupt president W.A. "Tony" Boyle from the United Mine Workers of America. When the burgeoning strike against the Duke Power Company at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, KY, proved such an urgent and compelling story, however, she shifted the project's focus.
 * Director Barbara Kopple has said that she, her crew and the Brookside coal miners they stayed with had to arm themselves to ward off coal company "gun thugs" during production. When Kopple returned to Harlan County to screen the finished film, she was accompanied by local authorities and armed guards.
 * Harlan County U.S.A. won the Academy Award@ for Best Documentary Feature - and was also among the 12 films designated by AFI in 1977 as "The Critics' Choice." In 1991, Congress named the film to the National Film Registry as "an American Film Classic." The Women's Preservation Fund and the Academy Film Archive later restored the film and remastered the soundtrack.
 * AFI was the first source of outside funding for Harlan County U.S.A. "When I was struggling in the coal mines of Kentucky, filming on the picket lines, in the jails, courtrooms and the homes of striking miners for my first film," said Kopple, "I received one of the first Independent Filmmaker Grants given by AFI. More than the money, the idea that AFI... wanted to support the film gave me the confidence to push on and finish it."

The Film
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