BLACK GOLD

Fall 2006

BLACK GOLD, an eye-opening and entertaining exploration of the business of coffee – from meticulously hand-picked bean to the $3 cup. Featured in the Sundance and Human Rights Watch film festivals, BLACK GOLD is must-see film experience for everyone who drinks coffee. And after you’ve seen it, that grande latte will never taste quite the same again"Handsome and astute. The Francises are aces behind the camera, displaying an elegant sense of composition that makes their subject visually ravishing." –Robert Koehler, Variety

Multinational coffee companies rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate an industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. But while we continue to pay premium prices for lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their fields.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save from bankruptcy the 75,000 struggling coffee farmers of the Oromia Coffee Collective. As these farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price. BLACK GOLD tells this story in what The Nation has called: "One of the strongest documentaries I’ve seen in the Human Rights Watch Film FestivaI,  or for that matter outside it."

British documentarians Marc and Nick Francis tell an engaging and nuanced story of contrasts, juxtaposing African women sifting coffee beans with bow-tied baristas competing for best cappuccino, and a bustling Starbucks café with a community of farmers foregoing their minimal salary in order to build a school for their children. BLACK GOLD connects the dots of our global economy, putting a human face on a systemic problem largely hidden from the caffeinated consumer.