Matewan
![Watch film Matewan — Matewan (1987) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]](https://www.acmodasi.in/amdb/images/posters/w/5/BFAEfWTJDeNg.webp)
All team (122)
Short description
Matewan is set in the coal fields of West Virginia in 1920, where a mining company controls nearly every part of its workers' lives, from their wages to the goods they buy. When the miners organize a strike for better pay and conditions, the company brings in armed agents and outside laborers to break it. A union organizer named Joe Kenehan arrives to hold the workers together, while a local police chief and mayor show sympathy for their cause. The film is based on real events.
John Sayles wrote and directed the film, which followed his 1984 feature The Brother from Another Planet and preceded Eight Men Out. Chris Cooper plays Kenehan in a cast that also includes James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, David Strathairn and Ken Jenkins. Sayles wrote the screenplay, and Peggy Rajski and Maggie Renzi produced the film for Goldcrest, Cinecom Entertainment Group, Film Gallery and Red Dog Films.
Matewan runs 132 minutes. It was made for about four million dollars and took in roughly two million worldwide, a modest return against its cost. On IMDb it holds 7.9 out of 10 from around 10,000 votes, while on TMDB it rates 7.4 from a much smaller group of 143. A critics' rating of 8.3 from 34 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The identity of the spy working for the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency (the character shown in the film) was actually revealed only during the trial.
- The film is based on real events, the so-called Battle of Matoun.
- By 1921, the miners' union had already been crushed. US President Warren Harding (1865-1923) imposed martial law in West Virginia and sent regular troops to the coalfields to protect the management of the coal companies from the workers. By this point, hundreds of miners had been killed, and thousands had been arrested and imprisoned. The creation of unions in the US was only allowed again in 1935 as part of the so-called "New Deal" announced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945).
- Sid Hatfield and (1891 or 1893 – 1921) Mayor Testerman (1882-1920) are buried next to each other in a small cemetery near Baskirk in Kentucky.
- Albert and Lee, brothers of detective agency owner Thomas Felts, were killed in Matewan. In retaliation for their deaths, agency employees killed former Matewan Sheriff Sid Hatfield and his deputy and friend Ed Chambers as they arrived in Welch, West Virginia, for court. The young men – unarmed and accompanied by their wives – were ascending the stairs to the courthouse entrance when they were met by five detectives (among them former spy Charles Everett Lively, 1887-1962), who shot and killed both of them. Hatfield died instantly from a bullet to the chest, after which one of the detectives fired several shots into the courthouse wall, and then placed a weapon in the hand of the deceased (to make it appear as though the detectives had come under fire and were forced to defend themselves). At that time, Lively finished off Chambers, who had already sustained several wounds and was being unsuccessfully defended by his wife. Hatfield was 28 years old and Chambers 22 at the time of their deaths, and thousands of miners attended their funeral.
- Filming took place in the town of Fourmond, located 160 km from Matoun.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
