Barbara Kopple

(On Cable TV, May 2021) I’m a happily unionized worker and it bothers me that unions have become marginalized in North American society — surely it’s not that difficult to figure out that labour and owners have opposing objectives, and that organized labour is an essential counterweight to management power. I strongly suspect that part of the reason why union membership trends downward is that the great labour victories of the past have largely been forgotten and their gains taken for granted. In this light, documentaries such as Harlan County U.S.A. remain just as important now than upon release, as filmmaker Barbara Kopple documents an ongoing miners’ strike in Kentucky. It’s a rough affair — not only does the strike carry on for months, depriving miners of income, but the company hired goons to roughen up both the miners and the documentary crew. Guns are seen, gunshots are heard and eventually a miner is shot and dies. This is all presented cinema-vérité style, with archival footage and interviews within the community to provide additional context. The result is very effective, and documents a past struggle that’s far more universal than being a strike at a specific mine. Harlan County U.S.A. remains a landmark even today — it won an Oscar upon release, was added to the National Film Archive in 2010 and continues to resonate through a slick Criterion edition. The images may be raw and rough, but the message still carries through.