Harlan County, USA  

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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 Academy Award 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.

Narrative

Kopple initially intended to make a film about Kenzie, Miners for Democracy and the attempt to unseat Tony Boyle as president of the UMWA. When miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, went on strike against Duke Power Company in June 1973, Kopple went there to film the strike, which the UMWA had helped to organize. She decided it was the more compelling subject, so switched the focus of her film. In all, she worked on the film for four years, including preparation and editing.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Harlan County, USA" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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