Wake up and smell the coffee

Hilary Aked watches the brilliant Black Gold, a documentary about the inequalities of the coffee trade.

Observational rather than overly polemical, the beautifully shot film states its case eloquently with carefully crafted footage which is ostensibly objective in tone, but damning in its editing. The film is keen to ground the debate in the everyday struggles of people, focusing on a particular collective of Ethiopian farmers and their champion, Tadesse Meskela.

Documentary film-makers, Nick and Marc Francis set out several years ago for Ethiopia, embarking on a project which was eventually to become Black Gold. Their motivation for making the film was to leave cinema-goers with some substantial food for thought to accompany their customary morning beverage.

Observational rather than overly polemical, the beautifully shot film states its case eloquently with carefully crafted footage which is ostensibly objective in tone, but damning in its editing. The juxtaposition of clips shows viewers plainly the disparity between the importance of coffee, the second most traded commodity after oil, in different lives.

After the World Barista contest, featuring the defending world champion (an impossibly self-satisfied Canadian), we are shown shots from a therapeutic feeding centre for undernourished children in Ethiopia, and images of farmers laughing incredulously when told the price of a cup of coffee in the West.

A slow-burning scandal emerges, informing the restrained anger which simmers under the surface. It gradually gathers momentum, and finally gains expression at the Cancún WTO summit in 2003. Representatives of developing countries walked out of the talks, criticising the undemocratic agenda of developed nations and their protectionist policies.

The film only touches on this larger political context, however, and is keen to ground the debate in the everyday struggles of people, focusing on a particular collective of Ethiopian farmers and their champion, Tadesse Meskela. His personal relationships with the farmers, and his quest for coffee buyers who will pay a fair price, provide the focal point of the film.

Meskela’s own humble origins, together with his wife’s loving testament to the work that he does, provide an affecting personal slant, but this is always reinforced by raw facts: in 2001 coffee prices had fallen to their lowest level ever; Africa's share of world trade has fallen over the last 20 years to one per cent; it is the only continent to have become poorer in the last two decades; seven million people in Ethiopia are now dependent on emergency food aid.

A neutral typewriter provides us with this information because the directors are reluctant to make use of an on-screen personality à la Michael Moore, or worse, a cheesy voiceover. Instead they let the camera linger on shots of the lush Ethiopian landscape and Andreas Kapsalis’ musical score complements such moments.

The structure does allow for a refreshingly un-confrontational approach, because it is a difficult thing to make supermarket shoppers really think about what they buy; to make coffee-drinkers enquire as to the real origins of the apparently familiar latte; to make people address the fact that their own governments maintain patently unfair trading policies which make others unable to compete.

“We wanted to urgently remind audiences that through just one cup of coffee, we are inextricably connected to the livelihoods of millions of people around the world,” state the directors, and they are not merely preaching to the converted.

Black Gold has already prompted action: after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, one viewer wrote a cheque for $10,000 to complete the building of a school featured in the documentary. By using one illustrative case it puts the spotlights on what developing countries need: trade not aid.