Can a film really change the world? Barbara Kopple seems to think so. Since the early seventies, she's been filming the lives of people that you wouldn't see on the nightly news, and showing us a different, more rounded side to every story.
Working with a collective of independent filmmakers in 1971, she helped film the Winter Soldier Investigation; a three day event, sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), that involved recording the testimony of over a hundred veterans, who had either seen war crimes take place, or had committed war crimes themselves. The footage was collected into the documentary film, Winter Soldier (1972).
Emboldened by this collaborative effort, Kopple struck out on her own to film a strike organized by mine workers in Harlan County, Kentucky, beginning in 1972. Four years later, her film, titled Harlan County USA, was released to wide acclaim, eventually winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The film solidified her style; honest, straight-forward, and without direct commentary. She lets the "characters" do the talking; and boy, does she ever find some characters!
Over the years, she's directed several other documentary films (Winning the Oscar again in 1991 for American Dream, another strike-centric film), as well as TV episodes for shows such as Homicide, and television commercials. She's made one critically lambasted fictional feature (a requirement of all great documentarians, it seems), Havoc (2005), which stars Anne Hathaway as a rich white girl who decides to start hanging out with an East LA gang.
Some notable works include: Friends For Life (1998), a documentary that aired on The Disney Channel, about a 11-year old boy living with HIV; Shut Up and Sing (2006), a chronicle of the right-wing's assault on The Dixie Chicks, following their "unkind" statements about President George Bush; and Bearing Witness (2005), the story of female reporters who chronicle war from the front line.
Still very active, and one of the most recognized and respected names in the documentary world, she still has many years left to help make a difference.
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