As part of our See Change initiative, we strive to showcase the work of women and non-binary individuals and their behind-the-scenes involvement in a production.
This film is edited by Sonya Polonsky and produced by Peggy Rajski and Maggie Renzi.
Celebrate Labor Day with a powerful film honoring the courage and struggles of the labor movement. Stay after the screening for a discussion moderated by UNO's William Brennan Institute faculty, with additional panelists to be announced.
Film Information
Written and directed by John Sayles, this wrenching historical drama recounts the true story of a West Virginia coal town where the local miners’ struggle to form a union rose to the pitch of all-out war in 1920. With a crackerjack ensemble cast and Oscar-nominated cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan taps into a rich vein of Americana with painstaking attention to local texture, issuing an impassioned cry for justice that still resounds today.
Union organizer Joe Kenehan, a scab named “Few Clothes” Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan’s vested interests so that justice and workers’ rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.
Reviews
"Matewan is a heartfelt, straight-ahead tale of labor organizing in the coal mines of West Virginia in 1920 that runs its course like a train coming down the track." –Variety
This film is presented in collaboration with
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