Barbara Kopple

Infobox Actor

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name = Barbara Kopple
birthdate = birth date and age|1946|7|30
birthplace = New York City, New York
academyawards = Best Documentary Feature
1976 "Harlan County U.S.A."
1990 "American Dream"

Barbara Kopple (born July 30, 1946) is an American film director primarily known for her work in documentary film. She has won two Academy Awards; the first was in 1976, for "Harlan County, USA" about a Kentucky miners' strike, and the second was in 1991, for "American Dream," the story of the Hormel Foods strike in Austin, Minnesota in 1985-1986.

She grew up in Scarsdale, New York, the daughter of a textile executive. She studied psychology at Northeastern University, after which she worked with the Maysles Brothers.

She has also directed episodes of the television drama series "" and "Oz".

Kopple also directed "A Conversation With Gregory Peck", as well as documentaries on Mike Tyson and Woody Allen. The latter film, "Wild Man Blues" focuses on his Dixieland jazz tour and on Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.

Her first non-documentary feature film, "Havoc", released straight to DVD in 2005, starred Anne Hathaway and Bijou Phillips as wealthy suburbanites who venture into East Los Angeles Latino gang territory.

Kopple has recently ventured into advertising work that includes documentary-style commercials for Target Stores.

She was also among the 19 filmmakers who worked together anonymously (under the rubric Winterfilm Collective) to produce the film "Winter Soldier", an anti-war documentary about the Winter Soldier Investigation. She has also done films for The Working Group, directing the 30-minute short documentary "Locked Out in America: Voices From Ravenswood" for the "We Do the Work" series. ("We Do the Work" aired in the mid1990s on the "P.O.V." television series on PBS, and Kopple's segment was based on the book "".)

In the fall of 2006, she released a documentary "" about the Dixie Chicks post-Bush controversy. She is the niece of playwright, Murray Burnett.

External links

* [http://www.cabincreekfilms.com Director Barbara Kopple's website]
*imdb name|name=Barbara Kopple|id=0465932
* [http://www.theworkinggroup.org/ The Working Group]