Harlan county usa summary. Harlan County, USA as a Reflection of a Conflict Theory Movie Review 2022-10-23
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Harlan County USA is a 1976 documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple that chronicles a coal miners' strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. The film follows the lives of the striking miners and their families as they struggle to stand up to the powerful coal company and fight for better wages and working conditions.
The film begins in 1973, when the miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, went on strike to protest the low wages and poor working conditions at the mine. The company, Duke Power, refused to negotiate with the miners and instead hired non-union replacement workers, leading to violent confrontations between the two sides.
As the strike dragged on, the miners and their families faced numerous challenges, including harassment and intimidation from the coal company and the local authorities, who were largely supportive of the company. The miners were also struggling financially, as they had no income while on strike and were relying on donations from supporters to get by.
Despite these challenges, the miners remained determined to fight for their rights and improve their living and working conditions. The film shows the miners and their families standing up to the coal company and the local authorities, and it also highlights the role of women in the strike, as they played a key role in supporting and organizing their husbands and fathers.
In the end, the miners won their strike and secured a new contract with the coal company, which included significant wage increases and improved working conditions. However, the film also highlights the ongoing struggles of the miners and their families, as they continue to face economic and social challenges in their community.
Overall, Harlan County USA is a powerful and inspiring documentary that tells the story of a group of people who stood up for their rights and fought for change in the face of great adversity. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit, and it serves as a reminder of the importance of standing up for what you believe in. So, the Harlan County USA is a story of struggle, determination and victory of coal miners against the powerful coal company.
HARLAN COUNTY: Women
On the whole, I believe the fact that the film was effective in depicting how these coalminers risk their lives to ensure that the homes and businesses of thousands of People in america are supplied with electicity and electrical power and therefore, they more than ought to have, at the very least, safe working conditions, fair labor practices, and higher pay. The scenes are intimate enough that claustrophobic viewers may have trouble getting through them. Most of all, the strength of the film lies heavily on its moral authority Biskind n. . Accented with sounds recorded in other ways—a few songs, speeches, and press conferences—they form a rich and complicated sound-scape. While the visuals confuse and disorient the viewer, the sound pushes the viewer into the fight.
‘Harlan County U.S.A.’ review by Rembrandt Q Pumpernickel • Letterboxd
Another challenges him for his spot, and he and his family end up murdered. Blair, a man who made his allegiance to the mine owners clear, "I did all in my power to aid the operators. And Kopple and members of her small crew, like many independent, politically oriented filmmakers in this period, blurred the boundary between documentarian and activist. . The viewer sees the lips of the miners moving in the dim light but does not hear their voices, only the roar of the equipment.
In one scene, Scott pulls a pistol from her bra. The workers strike with the backing of the UMW, but the fight will be long and hard. It is the small scale of the bribe that hit me, demonstrating how desperately poor these workers are. With the sound and image merging together, Workman sucks a raspy breath and begins a new verse of his song. The repeated shots of picket duty that precede this moment help the viewer read the very dark, shadowed image lit by the head lights of an approaching car.
After that, Lois, another strong, prominent woman in the group, asks to speak. Check the price for your assignment. But they manage to get a chilling shot of one of the thugs driving through in his truck wielding his gun. She has felt her heart pound as she gasps for breath. This may seem like an easy task to achieve as all faces are unique, but I rarely feel like directors manage to capture a face's unique character and, therefore, the person behind it. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
A very faint silhouette of a female picketer fills the screen. The first time is due to the fact that the original contract expired and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association BCOA and the UMW could not come to an agreement on another one, and the second time was because, though the BCOA and the UMW finally do come to an agreement, the contract that is ratified does not allow striking at a local level Kopple 01:32. She then talks about watching him die of black lung and that she knew something should be done about it. On July 7, a group of deputies, enraged at a public celebration of the Wagner Act, dispersed the crowd by beating several miners. But this correlation, visually and thematically, is a zero. A UMWA organizer who welcomed us displayed a revolver on the dashboard of his car.
The mine owners have as little regard as ever for the lives of miners and their families. It contains a famous scene where guns are fired at the strikers in the darkness before dawn, and Kopple and her cameraman are knocked down and beaten. My work here also draws on my research in the outtake footage, wild tracks, and supporting materials in the Harlan County U. The film is peppered with references to previous coal-mining struggles, notably deadly eastern Kentucky clashes in the 1930s. . She was the daughter of a Kentucky coal miner and married to Sam Reece, an organizer for the radical National Miners Union, then embroiled in the bloody 1931 Harlan County war. So after they were able to discover employment because coalminers, that they possibly observed it as a golden opportunity for them to make a living and enhance their conditions that is why they opted for work for the business without considering the unfair labor practices at that time.
Afterward I tore a sheet from a calendar on the wall and wrote the words to ' Strikers exchanged gunfire with private guards and local law enforcement; strikebreakers were set upon and beaten. The Making of Harlan County U. . The central narrative follows the story of the strike and especially the efforts of local miners and their wives and other supporters to picket the mine and keep strikebreakers from working there. Women old enough to have witnessed the union fights of earlier generations paste pro-UMW bumper stickers on the car doors of scabs driving toward the mine.
PDF from the original on March 27, 2010. Retrieved April 30, 2020. In 1791 the previous Kentucky County was incorporated into the new nation as a separate state, Kentucky. As the camera pans in on a close-up of one of the younger miners, Kopple records her own voice. Kentucky Office of Alcoholic Beverage Control. As of 2018 new jobs are being located in the county as Teleworks USA has opened a hub in the city of Harlan. Again, the visual lags a few seconds before shifting to sync up with the sound.
Most profoundly, it questions the aesthetic, political, and cultural meaning of the very categories inside and outside. Everybody should see this film. Gary Arnold, in his Washington Post review, According to the 1976 New York Times account, Kopple had, prior to her Harlan County stint, spent time in Ohio and West Virginia coal territories interviewing miners battling black-lung disease. In eastern Kentucky, for example, Katherine Pettit and May Stone opened Hindman Settlement School in 1902 and held classes in traditional ballad singing, along with reading and writing, through the 1920s. Harlan County is mentioned in the I Haven't Got The Blues Yet.
