Last spring, I was on the Netflix four-at-a-time plan and I burned through my stash in about a week (note: SANE). Other than 1940's screwball comedies and "woman's pictures," I clocked a lot of time with documentaries, and my favorite of the bunch was Harlan County, USA.
Barbara Kopple, who also directed American Dreams (about the Hormel Foods strike) and Shut Up and Sing (Dixie Chicks), spent her late 20's in Harlan County, Kentucky, following miners who were on strike to protest unsafe working conditions, unfair labor practices and low wages.
Throughout the film, the crew is harassed by representatives from Duke Power (called "gun thugs"), who seem too evil to be real, leering out of their pick-up trucks to harass workers they house in shacks without electricity or water. The corrupt union, with a leader who was later convicted of murdering his rival and that man's family, doesn't have to workers best interest at heart, either.
The hero of this tale is spitfire Lois Scott, a miner's wife (and miner's daughter), who keeps a gun in her bra and convinces a group of women to protest with switches when the company wins an injunction to keep more than 6 (male) miners from picketing at one time.
It's tragic, scary, funny, thoughtful, and you should see it. Like, today.
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