Black Gold: The Documentary About America's Favorite Addiction

The Fair Trade label extends to a great deal of coffees from around the world; Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Tanzania, East Timor, Sri Lanka or Vietnam. Fair Trade coffee is also a solution to bring Ethiopian coffee farmers out of the trap of aid and into world trade. The latest documentary film; Black Goldaddress the imperative of supporting farmers from the motherland of coffee, Ethiopia. There is much passion behind the people of Fair Trade and Black Gold brings this drive to the screen. Filmmakers Marc and Nick Francis follow the travels of Tadesse Meskela, an Ethiopian coffee farmers union leader, in his fight for fair trade. The film reveals the gaps of equality, like potholes in the trade route of the coffee bean.

While these Ethiopian farmers relish in the high grade of the coffee beans, they are steeply underpaid because of global trade markets. The Stock Exchange dictates coffee prices through the Starbucks of the world, but overlooks the human element that brings the crop to life. This sad situation, so rampant in our world, is one constantly beaten over our heads through documentaries and grassroots organizations. Oxfam, the global Human Rights organization, is one such group, but within their support of Black Gold take a creative angle rarely seen. It aspires to a level of documentary filmmaking achieved by Erik Gandini's anti-consumption work Surplus, though less abstract. It is found in Black Gold by the ability of transparency and slight objectivism from the filmmakers. It is clearly a film in favor of Fair Trade and sympathetic to the coffee farmers, but their voices are heard individually in contrast to depicted images of greed in world trade.