The State of American Labor Is Distilled in Two Documentaries and One UPS Union Fight

Veteran Filmmaker Barbara Kopple Returns to Worker Struggles in 'Union Town' Doc

It’s been 50 years since Barbara Kopple won the Academy Award for “Harlan County, USA,” a documentary about coal miners who went on strike for over 13 weeks in Kentucky as they demanded better working conditions. Kopple’s personal approach, living with the coal miners and their wives, produced a landmark work of cinema verite.  Now 80, she has just completed a new documentary about unions and workers, this time aimed at our gig economy – the vas…

The state of American labor is distilled in two documentaries and one UPS union fight

Under a current political administration that’s focused on deregulation, benefiting the corporate bottom line at the expense of everyday workers, it’s a dark time for the labor movement in the U.S. Two new documentaries—Yael Bridge’s Who Moves America and Barbara Kopple‘s Union Town—distill this unfriendly climate by observing a shared union conflict: the Teamsters’ 2023 struggle for a new UPS contract.  Who Moves America takes a more focused ap…

‘Union Town’ Review: Barbara Kopple Returns to Her Labor Roots by Unevenly Covering the Plight of New York Delivery Workers

In 1973, Barbara Kopple and a small team traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky to chronicle the Brookside miners’ strike against the Duke Power Company. She integrated herself into the community for over three years and witnessed peaceful demonstrations, violent retribution, and a hard-won solidarity amongst minders that stemmed from decades of poor health and a low standard of living. Her footage eventually comprised “Harlan County USA,” which wo…

Barbara Kopple on exploring “dignity and fairness” amid U.S. labor struggles in “Union Town”

Over the span of five decades, filmmaker Barbara Kopple has provided audiences with visceral, vérité depictions of the American labor movement and the struggles facing U.S. workers. From 1976’s Harlan ...

Union Town review – passionate exposé of US delivery workers’ employment conditions

Venice film festival: Barbara Kopple returns with her third film investigating US workers’ rights – this time, undocumented ‘deliveristas’ and the attempts to unionise Amazon staff Barbara Kopple’s documentary about app-based delivery workers is a stirring, defiant, battle-hardened affair, swinging between the fraught picket line and the still more hazardous New York City streets. It’s…

Union Town — Barbara Kopple [Venice '26 Review]

Few filmmakers have confronted the fractures of modern America with such formal rigor and moral devotion as Barbara Kopple. For several decades, the legendary documentarian has burrowed into her motherland’s fault lines, and her fierce attention to those who bear the cost of its failures and betrayals has remained constant across an otherwise varied body [...]