John Sayles has long been one of America’s great independent filmmakers (Matewan in 1987 and 1996’s Lone Star are modern classics). But in the beginning were the words. Sayles started out in the ...

Mingo County, West Virginia, 1920. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up against company operators and the gun thugs of the notorious Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Black and Italian ...

but it is harder than it ever has been to get such a film into cinemas. In the 1980s he and Renzi found ways. Matewan from 1987 told of a famous 1920s coal workers strike in West Virginia.