Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 48
Fresh: 40 | Rotten: 8
Black Gold is an eye-opening account of the winners and losers in the global coffee trade.
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 3
Black Gold is an eye-opening account of the winners and losers in the global coffee trade.
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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
Oct 6, 2006 Wide
Apr 27, 2010
California Newsreel
All Critics (53) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (8) | DVD (1)
If that $2 cup of Starbucks didn't jolt you awake, this documentary by Marc and Nick Francis might do the trick.
Black Gold moves at an inexorable pace, painstakingly building a case until suddenly it looms very large and casts an even longer shadow.
... a by turns poetic and hard-hitting critique of the global coffee industry ...
The lesson is clear: The system is broken and needs repair, and educating consumers is part of the solution.
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.
Guaranteed to make you think twice about what you're paying for what you're drinking.
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.
If you don't buy Fair Trade coffee after this you never will.
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.
True, fair trade coffee is not the newest story around, but Black Gold still makes for arresting viewing.
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.
The Francis brothers maintain a lively pace and a satirical mood.
An important and timely film that may make you think twice before downing your next cup of joe.
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.
... there is an additional irony to the title: The raw beans are not themselves black, but the growers are.
"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
April 13, 2011Super 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
March 20, 2010Super Reviewer
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