San Francisco Film Festival To Honor Barbara Kopple
Written by: FFT Webmaster | March 7th, 2012
At next month’s San Francisco International Film Festival (April 19 – May 3), the Festival will present the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award to veteran documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple. She will be presented with the POV Award on Sunday, April 22, preceding the screening of her masterful landmark documentary, the Oscar winning HARLAN COUNTY, USA (1976). In a career spanning 40 years, Kopple has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to social and cultural issues. From her historic debut documentary feature about a Kentucky coal miners’ strike to her most recent film on the controversy over the right to bear arms, 2011’s GUN FIGHT, Kopple has brought a boldly objective approach to the thorniest social issues of our time. In her Oscar winning AMERICAN DREAM (1990), she documented a pivotal strike at aHormel Foods packing plant, that signaled the policy of reducing the influence of unions that continues to this day. She has also delivered portraits of such seminal cultural figures as boxer Mike Tyson, filmmaker Woody Allen, baseball icon George Steinbrenner and rebellious musicians The Dixie Chicks. For more information on the Festival, visit: www.sffs.org