Plot Of Harlan County, USA
Director Barbara Kopple’s documentary Harlan County, USA is unique in that its production may have made just as much of an impact as its eventual release. The film, made over the course of many months in the early seventies, followed 180 coal miners in rural Kentucky on strike for safer working conditions and better pay, and the struggle that ensued when they tried to stand up to the Duke Power Company.
The strike was a long and bitter affair, with a number of acts of violence, and it was only after one of the miners was shot dead that some compromise was finally reached. Kopple’s camera was there to document it all, and there’s little doubt that several incidences of violence were averted simply because she and her film crew were present as witnesses. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1976, and its success helped the miners in Harlan County as well as other parts of the country gain the public awareness they needed to secure safer working conditions.
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