Barbara Kopple (Gumbo Coalition)

MovieMaker

Two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple helped invent the modern-day documentary with her groundbreaking Harlan County, USA, which recounted a brutal coalminers' strike in dirt-poor Harlan County, Kentucky and won the 1976 Oscar for best documentary. She won her second Oscar in 1991 for American Dream, about a heartland strike against the Hormel Foods corporation.

She returns to the grassroots struggle for survival and dignity in her new film Gumbo Coalition, about the work of the Civil Rights groups the Urban League and UnidosUS during the Trump presidency. We just saw it at the 25th anniversary edition of the Sarasota Film Festival, where we recorded this episode.

In addition to docs about social issues, Kopple has also made some fascinating films about celebrities at heightened moments, including the Woody Allen film Wild Man Blues and the Dixie Chicks portrait Shut Up and Sing. But what unites all of her films is a cinema vérité style in which she lets her subjects do the talking and observes with minimal interference.

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