Harlan County USA (1976)
Cabin Creek

Description

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

Tags

1970s, Kentucky, Mining, Strike, Oscar winner

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

The film retains all of its power, in the story of a miners' strike in Kentucky where the company employed armed goons to escort scabs into the mines, and the most effective picketers were the miners' wives -- articulate, indominable, courageous.
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10 DVD Verdict | Russell Engebretson

I felt a need to give this documentary a perfect score. Although nothing on our earthbound vale of tears is truly perfect, the spectacular clean up and transfer by Criterion combined with perhaps the finest documentary ever shot is as close to a perfect DVD viewing experience as I could have hoped for.
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10 DVD Talk | Randy Miller III

Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA (1976) is about as down-to-earth as films get---literally. More persuasive than informative, this account of a violent coal miners' strike in eastern Kentucky is still compelling in a way that few documentaries are.
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10 DVD Outsider

It's heartening to see how just how good Harlan County USA still is – its message is as relevant as it ever was, and much of it feels surprisingly contemporary in style and structure.
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10 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Harlan County, U.S.A., a film that serves as an important historical document and unfortunately remains as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

Sometimes ugly, always absorbing, this is an important, enlightening social record, one that serves the highest calling of the documentary filmmaker's art.
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9.0 filmcritic.com | Jake Euker

Harlan County, U.S.A. is more than a moving and purposeful documentary: it's an example of what film can be, or maybe what it might have been.
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9.0 PopMatters.com | Cynthia Fuchs

As Kopple became determined to accompany her new friends on the picket lines, her film makes no bones about what side it’s on. Filling in history of the horrific conditions afflicting coalminers—some safety issues remain unresolved to this day, as indicated by the West Virginia accidents—the documentary never loses focus on the people in front of the camera, whose lives were at risk in 1974.
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8.0 DVD Town | Christopher Long

"Harlan County USA" is a monumentally influential movie that remains as compelling today as when it was released thirty years ago.
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8.0 DVD Authority

This is powerful, unforgettable cinema that has lost none of its impact with time, one of the best documentaries I ever seen.
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7.0 New York Times | Richard Eder

It has flaws, some of them considerable, but it is a fascinating and moving work.
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