Filmmakers Marc and Nick Francis team to explore the discrepancy between the skyrocketing profits of multinational coffee companies and the all-time low prices paid for coffee harvests in a documentary that aims to provide a voice to the struggling farmers and laborers who strive to keep the coffee flowing. As devastated farmers are forced to sell off their once-bountiful lands simply to make ends meet, Ethiopia's once-thriving coffee industry slowly falls to ruin; but one man is out to fight
for the struggling laborers. Tadesse Meskela represents over 70,000 struggling coffee farmers, and in his mission to help the farmers preserve their rich heritage, Meskela has traveled to every corner of the globe on a mission to seek out fair prices for what are often considered the highest-quality beans on the market. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
This is a documentary that gets a lot across while avoiding cliches and easy exploitation, even in famine-ravaged places where more horrific images must have abounded.
It is attractively shot, thoughtfully edited, provocatively argued, and might just have you turning its issues over in your mind late into the night - or is that just the effect of so much coffee?
While the film is quick to posit fair trade as a solution, it fails to answer why, even with Meskela's admirable initiatives, his coffee farmers still struggle to buy shoes.
A worthy look at an exploitation that really shouldn't exist in this day and age, Black Gold will hopefully shock audiences into looking for the Fairtrade symbol next time they're in the supermarket.
Contrast that with shots of the grower's malnourished children relying on emergency foreign aid and it's enough to make your blood boil - never mind the coffee.
Intimate interviews with starving farmers selling beans for 24p a kilo while we pay 2 a cup will make you appreciate the importance of fair-trade when ordering your next double-shot, skinny latte.
While it may prompt some to think again next time they're in Starbucks, this astute insight into the coffee business is better at lauding the good guys than taking the multinationals to task for the iniquities of the global economy.
Whether due to resources or time or just plain laziness, directors Marc and Nick Francis have fashioned a rather shapeless movie that raises many good points but fails to fully investigate its findings.
Black Gold raises issues in an engaging way without preaching or becoming a lesson in economics. At the end of it all you will certainly be looking for those Fair Trade stickers.
"Black Gold" is an earnest documentary about an attempt to raise the prices paid to coffee farmers in Ethopia who are paid cents on the dollars. What the documentary does especially well is demolish the notion that paying farmers more will result in higher prices here in the West. Tadesse Meskela who manages a
cooperative union has a simple idea to just eliminate the middleman and bring the product directly to markets in the West. Of course, that's not as easy as it sounds since the coffee market is controlled mostly by four multinationals, Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee, with prices being set in New York and London while the World Trade Organization works behind closed doors to the benefit of western countries.
Tadesse Meskela's hard work is absolutely necessary to make the coffee farmers self-sufficient due to the dangerously low standard of living in rural Ethiopia, as there is not enough money currently for even basic services including education. But in trying to educate the viewer about its cause, the documentary dumps all of the relevant information early on, instead of forming a narrative following the coffee from harvest to brewing to drinking. Information could have been better provided throughout with a judicious use of talking heads. In fact, the approach "Black Gold" takes is haphazard at times with some strange tangents like the World Barista Championships as the documentary misses a valuable opportunity to educate when it talks to the baristas in Seattle. And sometimes a little confrontation is good for the soul
April 13, 2011
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
Interesting argument for raising the price of coffee paid to farmers, by looking at a co-operative in Ethiopia. The sections talking to baristas and other people in service, though a good addition to the film, felt a bit disjointed. It would have been interesting to see production in other countries than Ethiopia for
comparison, but nevertheless it makes its point without crying or shouting.
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