Barbara Kopple: A Career of Personal Crises and Creative Tensions

This chapter underscores the longstanding tensions in Kopple’s career. It focuses her complex and often ambivalent relationships with collaboration, including her fluctuating status as an auteur, mentor, and crew member. It examines the tensions in her career between embracing her identity as an independent filmmaker and choosing to join with studios, television networks, and other media outlets in a complex system of commercial patronage. The chapter also considers Kopple’s shifting political stances as both activist and apolitical humanist. Finally, it provides overviews of each section and chapter.