Harlan County, USA

In 1977, this account of the violent and bitter struggle between American miners and their employers won the Academy Award for best documentary film. At the start of the film, the laughing miners from Kentucky are still sitting cheerfully on a conveyor belt that jolts from the mineshaft, but soon it is clear that they are being repressed by their bosses. The working conditions are dreadful and occasionally miners die from black lung. Most of them were advised by ‘Miners for Democracy’ to join the union, but the management refused to sign the contract. Subsequently, union leaders told the miners that the management only wanted to make money from their misery. The result was a strike that lasted for months, with protest marches in New York, violent outbursts and arrests. In her film, director Barbara Kopple concentrates on the miners, who talk about the pre-war circumstances they find themselves trapped in.