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Independent film. Cert: U. 78 mins, dir: Nick & Marc Francis www.blackgoldmovie.com
This well-constructed but sometimes woolly documentary is a call to arms for fair trade in the coffee industry. By following the often vain attempts of Tadesse Meskela, general manager of a coffee producers’ co-operative in Ethiopia, to get a better price for the coffee that his farmers produce, the film convincingly conveys the iniquity of an $80billion (£40bn) a year industry that produces so little income for those who grow the beans that many of them struggle even to stay alive.
There are poignant scenes of hard-working farmers living 15 to a room with their families, lacking the means to send their children to school, or forced to seek food aid for their malnourished offspring.
This is not a relentlessly gloomy film, however, and it gets its message across without preaching, partly because there is no narration and the people it features are able to make the case for fairer trade on their own.
Where it falls down is in pinpointing the causes. While there is a suggestion that unseen middlemen, WTO rules, corporate greed and the dominance of the coffee bean markets in New York and London are to blame, this is never made specific. No breakdown is given of how coffee profits are made and who is taking more than their fair share. Without this data, the film goes for the heart of the viewer rather than the head. With more precision it could have targeted both.
Peter Mason
This well-constructed but sometimes woolly documentary is a call to arms for fair trade in the coffee industry. By following the often vain attempts of Tadesse Meskela, general manager of a coffee producers’ co-operative in Ethiopia, to get a better price for the coffee that his farmers produce, the film convincingly conveys the iniquity of an $80billion (£40bn) a year industry that produces so little income for those who grow the beans that many of them struggle even to stay alive.
There are poignant scenes of hard-working farmers living 15 to a room with their families, lacking the means to send their children to school, or forced to seek food aid for their malnourished offspring.
This is not a relentlessly gloomy film, however, and it gets its message across without preaching, partly because there is no narration and the people it features are able to make the case for fairer trade on their own.
Where it falls down is in pinpointing the causes. While there is a suggestion that unseen middlemen, WTO rules, corporate greed and the dominance of the coffee bean markets in New York and London are to blame, this is never made specific. No breakdown is given of how coffee profits are made and who is taking more than their fair share. Without this data, the film goes for the heart of the viewer rather than the head. With more precision it could have targeted both.
Peter Mason
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