Harlan County U.S.A.

Harlan County U.S.A. (1977) is Barbara Kopple's documentary, free to watch online on iFILM. For the better part of a year the crew lived in the Kentucky coalfields, where miners at the Brookside pit refused to go back underground.

The fight was over a single contract. Eastover Mining, a Duke Power subsidiary, wouldn't recognize the union the men had just joined. So 180 families walked the picket line — and the wives often held it harder than their husbands. Company gun thugs rolled in, shots cracked in the dark, and Kopple kept her camera rolling from inside the crossfire. Thirteen months of it, no narrator explaining things to you, just faces and old union songs.

It took home the Oscar for Best Documentary and was later picked for preservation by the Academy Film Archive. What carries it is Florence Reece, an elderly miner's widow who sings her own "Which Side Are You On?" straight into the lens. Stream Harlan County U.S.A. (1977) online on iFILM.