‘Harlan County, USA’ Director Barbara Kopple Isn’t Done With Labor Just Yet
📖 Full Retelling
The two-time Oscar winner last tackled a union campaign with 1990’s ‘American Dream.’ Now she’s working on a new project, the details of which she shares with The Hollywood Reporter.
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Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment When documentarian Barbara Kopple directs a film about the labor movement, she tends to go big. With 1976’s Harlan County, USA , she documented the dramatic 13-month strike waged by Kentucky coal miners against the Eastover Mining Company, filming armed standoffs and violent altercations between workers and management. In 1990’s American Dream Kopple tackled the failed 1985-1986 strike waged by meatpacking workers against a Minnesota Hormel Foods plant, capturing the splintering of a union in real time. Both films won the Academy Award for best documentary. Related Stories Business Striking Writers Guild Staffers Picket Outside Building Where Union Is Negotiating With Studios Business SAG-AFTRA and Studios Fail to Reach Deal, Negotiations to Continue Later in Spring Now, Kopple is returning to the subject of worker organizing with a new film interweaving three separate but interconnected labor stories in and around New York City. Since 2023 Kopple has been documenting delivery workers, including those working for Amazon, UPS and food-delivery apps, in their fight for higher wages and improved working conditions. Some of her subjects have unions (UPS drivers and part-time loaders are represented by the Teamsters, for instance, who are also organizing Amazon workers) and others do not, such as the so-called “deliveristas” working for apps. “These are three stories that are New York. It’s not Kentucky, it’s not Minnesota, it’s New York,” says the filmmaker, who spoke about the film ahead of receiving the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival’s Lens of Power Tribute award on April 9. “And I just wanted to see what was happening, really, with modern-day unionism.” What she has learned so far has struck her. Even for someone accustomed to covering...
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