Black Gold (2006)

Agreeing with everything RKeller87 said, this movie shows both the mundane back-story of how coffee gets from the field to your cup but the heart-wrenching story of the growers who are between a rock and a hard place when selling their crops for less than they need to live on. And PLEASE don't say "Why don't they do something else for a living, or raise something else?" Their options are not as varied as yours are, my brother or sister, and when they do raise something else, it is not necessarily better for them in the long run. The Fair Trade movement is part of the solution to this problem, and I hope everyone who sees this film starts asking for and buying their own fair-trade coffee, tea, chocolate, and cocoa.

Black Gold doesn't shout at you, vilify any single corporation or government, or make you feel guilty about really liking coffee.It does, however, invite you to see a very nuanced and sensitive view of an entire economic and social system that isn't working very well. This isn't "the anti-Starbucks movie" a la Supersize Me. This is a movie that starts the conversation about our trade system and the West's relationship with countries that feed us. Black Gold makes you want to get involved or inform yourself but doesn't map out exactly how, leaving it up to you. It isn't narrated by any off-screen voice overs and doesn't tell you exactly what to think.I was fascinated to find out how coffee is grown and how small differences in price cause huge impact on farmers' families and communities. As a Washington, DC, resident I go out for Ethiopian food more than I order pizza, so I was glad to get a glimpse of what life is like in Ethiopia and how beautiful and lush the natural scenes are.Please go see it because it's really enjoyable and thoughtful -- a refreshing new model for how to make a documentary.

I saw Black Gold last night in JIFFEST (Jakarta International Film Festival). It attracted me in 2 ways i couldn't predict before. First, it invited me to think of the source of what seems familiar to me, namely, the cup of coffee sold by one of those MNC's listed in the film. Second, it just struck me (dumbfoundedly) at how fair trade is not an abstract issue discussed within the air conditioned walls and have no impact whatsoever with my life and other poor farmers in Ethiopia.I just kept guessing, whether this film could be watched by coffee drinkers here in Indonesia, and whether, with sufficient guidance by experts in coffee production and trading, they would come to a higher level of awareness to stir consumers' action to protect their own country's coffee farmers from the cruel mechanism of unfair trade in such a global scale.I enthusiastically recommend this film 9 out of 10!

A fantastic insight into the coffee trade, especially in light of the fact that many may protest about the rate of Starbucks' hitting street corners despite few knowing the real facts of international coffee culture and trade.The strength with which this documentary gets to grips with trade barriers, price fixing in the industry and the falsehoods that Coffee Houses provide (to give the impression of caring about free trade produce) gives the viewer a really good understanding of a problem that exemplifies the facts of world economics at large.Was lucky to catch this film at the NFT in London and thought it was a seriously captivating documentary, largely as a result of the power of the stories the camera was able to provide. The sight of the malnourished child (though not under-nourished enough for aid treatment), although witnessed countless times before in other settings, remained poignant. The juxtaposition of the Barista competition in Seattle against the shots of the Ethiopian coffee traditions was a timely reminder of the differences in lifestyles that continue in the world, despite our proclamations of globalisation and the world effectively becoming smaller.It would be wrong to call this 'another Michael Moore flick', but it would be a shame if this film did not cause the same level of debate