UNION TOWN Luminaries

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and producer Barbara Kopple.

Fifty years after HARLAN COUNTY, USA became a landmark of American documentary filmmaking, two-time Oscar® winner Barbara Kopple returns to the front lines of the labor movement. The culmination of a film trilogy, UNION TOWN finds the veteran cinéma vérité filmmaker on the streets of New York, where the fight for workers’ rights has moved from mines and factories to warehouses, delivery trucks and smartphone apps. Over three years, Kopple follows three distinct but interconnected battles involving UPS employees, Amazon subcontractors and the largely immigrant bike couriers of Doordash and Grubhub, known as deliveristas, all of whom navigate dangerous streets and precarious working conditions without the protections of a traditional union. As workers organize for better wages, safety and dignity, they confront corporations whose enormous power increasingly shapes how Americans work. Intimate, rousing and deeply attuned to the people behind the movement, UNION TOWN captures both the hard-won victories and everyday acts of solidarity fueling a new chapter in American labor. –Mimi Brody