Harlan County U.S.A.

Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County, U.S.A. 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 Reese, 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.



Overview
Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA was one of the most important and powerful political documentaries of the 1970s, a startling and compelling look at a bitter coal miner's strike in Kentucky in the early '70s, and this DVD release of the film from The Criterion Collection treats Kopple's work like the masterpiece it is. This edition of Harlan County, USA has been transferred to disc in letterboxed format at the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 while the film was shot in 16 mm at the 1.33:1 ratio, this disc reflects the presentation of the 35 mm blow-up used for theatrical release, and has been enhanced for anamorphic play on 16 x 9 monitors. While the grain of the 16 mm image is apparent throughout, this transfer is noticeably clearer and sharper than Harlan County, USA's previous releases on video, and the colors are clear without being pushed into excessive brightness. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Mono and is crisp and full of presence, despite the occasional and unavoidable flaws of documentary field recording. The film is in English, with no multiple language options. Among the bonus materials are 26 minutes of deleted sequences from the film, a 21-minute documentary on the movie's long and difficult production including interviews with Kopple and her associates, an onscreen interview with filmmaker John Sayles, who talks about his appreciation of Harlan County, USA and its influences on his own picture Matewan, and a conversation with singer Hazel Dickens, who discusses growing up in coal country and her music which was used in the picture. Roger Ebert hosted a panel discussion on Harlan County, USA at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and footage from that presentation has also been included. Kopple and editor Nancy Baker contribute a lively and fascinating commentary track in which they offer still more background on how the movie was made. The original theatrical trailer for Harlan County, USA rounds out the disc, and the package includes a handsome booklet with essays from Paul Arthur and Jon Weisberger. Few films say as much about class, labor, and the battle for economic equality -- and say it with such simple eloquence -- as Harlan County, USA, and Criterion's DVD release is easily the definitive presentation of this landmark in documentary moviemaking.


All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener
It's hard to believe that no great documentary films came out of the labor struggles of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, when unions such as the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and the United Mine Workers waged battles sometimes literally with management over basic issues that had been woefully neglected for many years. With Harlan County, USA, Barbara Kopple is able to distill many details of those earlier conflicts: the exploited workers, the bosses complaining about lost profits in the wake of rising wages and stricter safety precautions, and the divisions between the working men on strike and those desperate enough to break the picket line for any paycheck. She can do this because she lived the story for four years in a honest effort to tell all, and did not just drop in for a week as so many TV journalists seem to do. Though Kopple is clearly on the side of the miners, it's difficult to imagine a so-called objective filmmaker doing a more effective job of presenting the issues involved in this struggle. Most importantly, Harlan County, USA shows how a strong sense of community is the workers' greatest ally; the miners' wives and girlfriends offer not only moral support but even do the sometimes dangerous duty of walking the picket lines.