Brian Draper meets two film-makers who’ve shot a powerful documentary on the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers.

The simple pleasures in life are often the best. And a beautifully made cup of coffee surely ranks among them. As we all know, coffee can be a sensual, social experience – it fills a room with the smell and taste of cultured sophistication...

Yet the contrast in fortune between those of us at the end of the coffee chain and those at the beginning should make us choke on our cappuccinos, if only we’d stop and think. At least, that’s the view of two British film-makers who have made Black Gold, a hard-hitting documentary feature film which explores both the economic chasm and, paradoxically, the intimate relationship between coffee grower and consumer.

“We wanted urgently to remind audiences that through just one cup of coffee, we are inextricably connected to the livelihoods of millions of people around the world who are struggling to survive,” reflects Nick Francis.

Nick and his brother Marc began making Black Gold in 2003, shortly after the Ethiopian government announced that its people were facing a food crisis similar to that of 1984.The difference, this time, was that even the coffee farmers were caught in it (previously, they had been part of the relief effort).

Three years later, the film is touring 20 cities in the US (having premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival), and has just been shown at the London Film Festival, with a likely March release for the UK. It’s also touring Germany, Canada and New Zealand – “and this is just the beginning”, says Nick.

The directors are delighted but overwhelmed by the interest so far, and are working hard to capitalise on it. “We could never have anticipated the reaction,” says Nick. “Wherever it screens, it sells out. People are sitting in the aisles.They are using Black Gold as something to mobilise around.”

“It’s exciting when we hear responses like the one we got the other day,” explains Marc. “A woman wrote to us to say, ‘I enjoy coffee so I went to see your film. It feels like my whole world has been blown open. I had no idea of this world that existed outside of my coffee cup.’”

Their agenda was simple, he continues. “Ethiopia produces some of the best coffee in the world, yet those coffee-growing communities are caught up in a food crisis. The coffee industry has grown to $80 billion a year; coffee shops are opening on every street corner, yet coffee farmers are struggling to feed their children. That’s outrageous and insane.”

Their approach is perhaps more visually artistic than other recent high-profile documentaries. “We wanted to communicate in a way that wasn’t going to preach or lecture, but would bring new audiences into the debate about ‘trade,not aid’, ”says Marc.

“We’ve become desensitised to images of poverty. The question for us was, how can we humanise it and find a new way in?” So they consciously avoided replicating Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me, in which white men raged against the machine. “It was very intentional to cast the protagonist from Ethiopia, someone who is doing something from within the country,” recounts Nick.

And so Black Gold juxtaposes stunning, inspiring and at times painful scenes from Ethiopia with the gleaming café culture of the West. And in particular, it tracks the progress of Tadesse Meskela, the general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, as he visits the West in search of a fairer deal for the 101  co-operatives and the 74,000 coffee farmers he represents back home.

The Francis brothers came to realise that both growers and consumers seem oblivious to each other. In Seattle,at the original Starbucks store, one worker, Janine, beams without a hint of irony that “we are in the business of touching people”; meanwhile, in Ethiopia, we see Tadesse visiting his farmers to ask whether they have any idea how much a cup of coffee sells for in the West. They look unsure, offering guesses of a few cents per cup. When he tells them it’s more like $2.90, they don’t know what to say.

The growers sell each kilo of coffee for around 23 cents.Yet one kilo yields 80 cups,grossing around $230 for those who sell it.That’s quite a profit.

In some of the best coffee-producing regions,many farmers are not breaking even. The film shows a “therapeutic feeding centre” in the middle of one such area, where mothers take their undernourished children in the hope of receiving help .A list of criteria for admission is nailed to the door. “Too weak to suck” is one. A little girl who looks painfully thin is weighed. Her mother is told that she is not malnourished enough to receive help.

“It was immensely disturbing. We wanted the viewer, as far as possible,to relive the experience we had. To be in one of the poorest areas of the world one moment, and one of the richest in the next,” says Marc. Nick adds, “It was essential to convey the paradox – that where we were filming, where these people were starving; this was the very place that props up the ever-increasing profits of some of the largest corporations in the world.

“That was the most shocking experience we’ve had in our career. We felt the responsibility to document that, to tell the story, so that others can make the connection. Because even people working in those areas don’t make the connection.”

The brothers say that they deliberately set out to avoid “corporation bashing”, but were offered no help by Kraft, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, Sara Lee and Starbucks – the five main companies who control over half the international coffee market. In particular, they wanted to know exactly how much – or little – the multinationals paid the growers. “We asked all of them to contribute, and they all declined.”

As the film now gathers momentum, Starbucks has been keen to have its say, issuing statements to the media though never accepting the invitation to debate with the film-makers ‘live’.

“They’re trying to discredit us,” reflects Marc. “They sent a memo out to all their stores ahead of the London Film Festival to say that Black Gold is ‘an incomplete and inaccurate film’. It’s not a film about Starbucks, but they’ve reacted to it, perhaps because the people who drink Starbucks are the type of people who will also see Black Gold.”

Despite the film’s dignified portrayal of the Ethiopian farmers,they nevertheless seem entirely beholden to forces beyond their control. Since the International Coffee Agreement collapsed when the US withdrew from it in 1989, the price of coffee has been dictated mainly by the New York coffee exchange, which has driven it to a 30-year low.

But there are some green shoots. In the film, Tadesse visits Taylor’s of Harrogate, a British company which refuses to base its pricing on the whims of the New York exchange. Independent coffee companies can and are buying directly from people like Tadesse, who is seeing some fruits for his relentless labours.

Since 1999, for example, when the Oromia Coffee Farmers’ Co-operative Union was established, the Union has facilitated the building of four new schools, 17 additional classrooms, four health centres and two clean water supply stations. It has also returned $2 million back to the farmers in the form of dividends.

“But there is no resolution to Tadesse’s journey,” warns Nick. “Right now he’s in Holland. He was in the States recently. He must keep going.”

In the meantime, the film-makers have had to put any thoughts of making films on hold, as Black Gold embarks on an 80-city tour which reaches Berlin in June, to coincide with the next G8 summit.

It launches in Addis Ababa in February. “We’re inviting the international community centred around the city,” says Marc. “We’ll be reaching millions of people in the next few months,” he enthuses. For now, their hope is that anyone who sees the film will visit the discussion forum on the film’s website, blackgoldmovie.com 

“The question is,” he reflects, “how do you challenge the pathological indifference that we all suffer from?” It’s something to think about, at least, when we next sink into the sofa at Starbucks.

More information

www.blackgoldmovie.com

All images © Speak-it/Fulcrum Productions