Directed by Barbara Kopple • 1976 • United States
Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning HARLAN COUNTY USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack, with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece, the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line.
Up Next in Women Make Film
-
One Sings, the Other Doesn't
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1977 • France
Starring Valérie Mairesse, Thérèse Liotard, Ali RaffiIn the early 1960s in Paris, two young women become friends. Pomme is an aspiring singer. Suzanne is a pregnant country girl unable to support a third child. Pomme lends Suzanne the money for an illegal...
-
The Ascent
Directed by Larisa Shepitko • 1977 • Soviet Union
Starring Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergei YakovlevThe crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the ...
-
Les rendez-vous d'Anna
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1978 • France
Starring Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali NoëlChantal Akerman’s narrative follow-up to her international breakthrough, JEANNE DIELMAN, is a penetrating portrait of a woman’s soul-deep malaise and a mesmerizing odyssey through a haunted Europe. Whi...
