Screening of "Black Gold"

When
02 Apr 2013
7:00 PM
Location
The Campus Theatre, located at 413 Market Street in Lewisburg

"Black Gold" explores the international coffee trade and its ramifications for the farmers who grow coffee.

The Bucknell University Environmental Center's spring "Green Screens" film series continues on Tues., April 2, with a 7:30 p.m. showing of "Black Gold." (A pre-film reception featuring fair-trade products will begin at 7 p.m.)
Admission to the film showing is $2 per person. Directed by Marc and Nick Francis, the 2006 documentary "Black Gold" explores the international coffee trade and its ramifications for coffee farmers. It focuses on the coffee growers of the Oromia Region of southern and western Ethiopia, following Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, as he visits coffee-growing regions in Sidamo and Oromia, as well as a coffee processing center, a coffee auction house, and his union's headquarters in Addis Ababa. Meskela also travels to England and the United States in an effort to promote Ethiopian coffee by eliminating the numerous middlemen.
The film also includes footage of the New York Board of Trade, a commodity trading floor in New York City, where the "C" international benchmark price of coffee is set each business day based on supply and demand, and it explores the effects that these international prices have on Ethiopian coffee growers. Additional footage was shot at the first Starbucks, the World Barista Championship during the 2005 Specialty Coffee Association of America conference in Seattle, and at a café and the Illy coffee company in Trieste, Italy. These scenes stand in stark contrast to the footage of the impoverished conditions faced by the Ethiopian coffee farmers and their families.
The Campus Theatre is located at 413 Market Street in Lewisburg. "Green Screens" is presented as part of the Bucknell University Film/Media Series.