The movie, which won the 1976 Academy Award for best feature-length documentary, was shot over a period of eighteen months in eastern Kentucky, after the miners at the Brookside mine voted to join the United Mine Workers. The Duke Power Company refused to sign the UMW contract, fought the strike, and was fought in turn by the miners and—most particularly—their wives. Barbara Kopple and her crew stayed in Harlan County during that entire time, living in the miners’ homes and recording the day-by-day progress of the strike.
