Plot 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 miners, brought in by the company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. UMWA organizer and dual-card Wobbly Joe Kenehan determines to bring the local, Black, and Italian groups together.
While Kenehan and his story are fictional, the setting and the dramatic climax are historical; Sid Hatfield, Cabell C. Testerman, C. E. Lively and the Felts brothers were real-life participants, and 'Few Clothes' is based on a character active several years previously.
Encoding info Encoded from BluRay remux (Matewan.1987.Criterion.BluRay.Remux.1080p.AVC.FLAC.1.0-TDD.mkv), with HandBrake 1.3.3: HEVC x265 10 bit slower preset, CRF 25, 720p, aq-mode 1, sao/strong-intra-smoothing/rect disabled.
MEDIAINFO General Filename = Matewan (1987) with commentary 720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits.mkv Duration = 2 h 13 min Size = 699 MiB Overall bit rate = 734 kb/s
Video #0 Format = HEVC x265 - 3.2.1+1-b5c86a64bbbe:[Linux][GCC 9.3.0][64 bit] 10bit Resolution = 1280x694 Aspect ratio = 1.85:1 (1.844) Bit rate = 645 kb/s Frame rate = 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Audio #0 Title = Mono Format = Opus Channels = 1 channel Bit rate = 46.1 kb/s Sampling rate = 48.0 kHz Language = English
Audio #1 Title = Commentary with director/writer John Sayles and cinematographer Haskell Wexler Format = Opus Channels = 1 channel Bit rate = 39.8 kb/s Sampling rate = 48.0 kHz Language = English