Everyone drinks coffee. But not everyone knows the harsh economic and political story behind their morning latte. Directors Nick and Marc Francis traveled the world to illuminate the stark realities of the starving Ethiopian coffee farmer and the broken global trade system they're at the mercy of in their compelling, beautifully shot feature-length debut, Black Gold, which is competing in the World Cinema: Documentary section at Sundance '06.
By Jessica Letkemann

Top: Black Gold directors Nick and Mark Francis. Bottom: Ethiopian women sort bad beans out of a massive coffee batch, earning only around 50 cents a day.

Marc Francis: Oh, we really liked a good cup of coffee and we still like our coffee. Making the film has definitely affected us, and moved us, and shaken us to the point that we can't help thinking about where it comes from.

This being a documentary, you as directors were the de facto cinematographers and it seemed that the cinematography was something you truly focused on. The use of bright colors to connect the Ethiopian hilside with the cities like New York and Mexico City and then stark black and white screens with the statistics written out in the same industrial font that appears on burlap sacks of African coffee is particularly effective.

Nick Francis: Ethiopia, for the last 20 years, has been shown in the media as essentially a barren desert. One of our goals was to show that Ethiopia is actually a stunning, stunning country with lush greenery to challenge the perception. That's why it's very considered in the cinematography. [We wanted to] try and give people a sense of feeling that they are there.

Marc: It was really important for us to develop and tell a really strong story and be able to have very powerful visual imagery to take you across the continents and the contrast of different places that we move to.

Nick: We traveled a long way to different countries around the world and it was fascinating to look at how different cultures experience coffee. In Ethiopia, when they have coffee in the rural areas it's a whole ceremony. That's in the film. You have three cups of coffee, there's a significance to every single cup. When you're on to America, you go into Starbucks or wherever, and it's very in and out. When you go to Austria or Italy, there's an elegance around having a cup of coffee with an espresso, glass of water, and a chocolate. I think it's made us think much more about where we fit in.

The film's thrust is that coffee farmers are slipping into life-threatening poverty because they can't get a fair price from the middlemen and commodities exchanges that dictate such things. Meanwhile the consumer coffee market is booming, and multinational corporations are getting ever richer. Do you think it's a little bit ironic that this film is debuting in a festival that counts Starbucks as one of it's sponsors?

Nick: If you take the view that you're not going to get involved with things if there is a remote association, then we wouldn't be able to push the film forward. Our main goal is to make sure that as many people around the world as possible see it and engage with it. If we were making a film that was directly about Starbucks, then we'd be having a different conversation, but this is a film that looks at the coffee industry as a whole and Starbucks is just a player within that global context.

Has the situation in Ethiopia changed at all since the film was made?

Nick: Depending on what time of the day and what time of the year you ask that question, the answer is going to be different. The market fluctuates all the time and that's the problem. It's that unpredictability that is causing the farmers not to have any long term plan sustainable approach to their work. And I just found out today that Ethiopia has just made another humanitarian appeal, the crisis is getting worse in terms of food dependency. They're asking for millions and millions of dollars to cope with another food emergency. Keep in mind this is a country that is the birthplace of coffee and produces the best coffee in the world. How can a country that produces such a valuable commodity be in such a crisis? We drink this coffee every day. If Africa's share of world trade increased by one percentage point, it would generate roughly five times the amount of money that they're receiving in aid. It begs the question: why isn't there a much more considered view of this whole trade-aid dynamic?

Marc: I think the relationship between governments and corporations is becoming so increasingly blurred, and one of the defining questions of the next decade will be about how producers and consumers fall into that equation as they get more and more marginalized and less empowered. How will they re- empower themselves? The story of Tadesse Meskela, in the film, shows how someone's trying to do something about it in a way that gets results.

He was an interesting central character, this man who could relate to the farmers in the cooperative union he represents but also who is able to very much fit in in international business settings. Since the farmers are so incredibly poor, where does he get the money to travel the world negotiating better prices for his union?

Marc: He's tapped in to the international fair trade associations and he supplies his coffee to an through many international organizations. He works in tandem with these organizations. Plus, Tedesse represents 70,000 farmers in a cooperative system, so he's not dependent on his association with those other organizations. More and more people are getting switched on to the idea of buying coffee directly from the producers rather than going through a whole string of middle men.

What do you hope moviegoers will take away from seeing this film?

Nick: As smaller coffee chains are getting pushed out of the market, it's becoming increasingly more difficult for consumers [to navigate the] confusion around what is fair trade or not fair trade. Hopefully when people watch the film they'll start asking some of these questions, and doing further research or coming to our website, blackgoldmovie.com. They might think about adapting their habits in a way that might change the status quo.

What is your next project?

Marc: We're working on perhaps making this part of a trilogy where we look into other things that we use in our daily lives which relate to people and lands far, far away.