Review: Black Gold (SIFF 2006)

Look down at your cup of coffee. Where was the coffee grown? How many hands touched the beans between field and barista? How much did the farmer get for those beans? What about the other food you eat; how does it measure up?

These are the questions Black Gold posits. While focused on the fair trade movement and its effects in a burgeoning Ethiopean coffee growers co-op, the theme resonates beyond coffee and forces you to question how and where the products we eat and buy come from, and how much the growers versus the middle men are earning for these products.

Black Gold reviews the efforts of Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromo Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union. Tadesse's main focus is to remove the middle men between the coffee farmer and coffee roaster, and return more money to the farmer's pocket.

So, what's the problem with conventional coffee? In a sentence, the global price is set in commodities markets in New York and London, and no consideration is given to the local cost of living for a given farmer and his family. Currently, Ethiopian farmers get about $0.24 a kilo. A living wage for them would be about $2.00. That's still a very small price to pay to the grower given the cost of a pound of beans or an espresso drink here in the States, yet prices are kept low and farmers have to make do with a tenth of what they need. Furthermore, World Trade Organization talks in the past few years have failed to negotiate a fair price for coffee and other commodities for the Third World.

The result is that coffee, one of Ethiopia's most abundant natural resources, is sold for very little money. Farmers as a result don't have clean water, enough food, or good schools to send their children. Ironically, the film shows the amount of aid we give to countries like Ethiopia, and contrasts it with the little money we purchase their resources with. It also shows how a very small boost in the GDP of these countries would overshadow the amount of aid that we currently give them.

As a film, Black Gold is very well made. Excellent camerawork, editing, and a comfortable pace, combined with moving images of farmers and their families struggling to survive, make for a great documentary. Add to that the overall message and the information the documentary provides, and Black Gold becomes a movie most any Western consumer should watch.

Overall rating: 9.0 /10.0

Details:
Runtime: 82m
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English, Ethiopian, Italian