雪可屋咖啡茶館 ShakeHouse

< black gold > A Film by nick & marc francis 

Directors' Statement  

WHY BLACK GOLD?

We were provoked to make a film about coffee after it was announced at the end of 2002 that Ethiopia was facing another famine. Twenty years earlier in 1984, people across the world had been motivated to respond to this crisis by giving aid. The difference this time was that coffee farmers were being caught up in this new food crisis while the global coffee industry was booming. 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 who are struggling to survive. Coffee is a universal experience enjoyed by billions of people on a daily basis and is part of an industry worth over $80 billion a year. But the people behind the product are in crisis with millions of growers fast becoming bankrupt. Nowhere more evident is this paradox than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Our hope was to make a film that forced us, as western consumers, to question some of our basic assumptions about our consumer lifestyle and its interaction with the rest of the world.

BLACK GOLD - WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE    

We passionately believe that the language of film is a uniquely powerful medium to communicate to audiences everywhere about an engaging and timely issue that has an impact on the world in which we live. This has been the underlying theme of all of our work. But with BLACK GOLD, we were even more determined to make a film that would reach audiences everywhere and be relevant for all people. From the beginning we wanted to make a film which, while having a political purpose, was not overly polemic; a film which was observational - giving the viewer the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about what they are experiencing. In making the film we also wanted to challenge the portrayal of Africa often characterised in the Western media by an overload of de-contextualised images depicting poverty with no link to our own lives. 

< Black Gold 官網 >

「黑金」咖啡期貨界獨領風騷　紀錄片指靠剝削咖啡農而來  / ETtoday記者許瑜菁編譯

一般我們常說的「黑金」，指的是石油，不過其實還有另外一種黑金，那就是咖啡豆。目前咖啡豆是期貨市場最有價值的商品，全球每年產業總值高達800億美元，約2.6兆台幣之多，不過根據最新的紀錄片指出，種植咖啡豆的農民，收入卻少之又少，當你喝一杯100多塊錢的咖啡,他們的獲利不到1塊。 

當你啜飲一口卡布奇諾或是拿鐵咖啡的時候，你或許不知道光鮮明亮的咖啡廳濃醇香好喝的咖啡背後，卻是咖啡農夫遭到嚴重剝削的醜陋故事。紀錄片「黑金」導演尼克法蘭西斯基說：「當你買一杯美美金3元的咖啡，農夫拿到的少於3毛，而這個差異，讓咖啡農夫幾乎破產。」 

日前在英國上映，由法蘭西斯兄弟拍攝- -名為< Black Gold 黑金 > 的紀錄片，敘述由於國際咖啡期貨的交易，缺乏保護農民的機制，衣索比亞的7萬4千名咖啡農是如何在困苦的生活夾縫中求生存，不過現在很多非政府組織意識到這個問題，一個國際消費者保護團體公開出面要求咖啡製造商，不應該咖啡農和消費者中間，謀取鉅額的暴利。

全球咖啡產業一年總值800億美元，約等於台幣2.6兆元。不過，事實上非洲的咖啡農一天工資只有50美分，大約16塊台幣，他們7天的工資，才抵得過西方連鎖咖啡店的一杯拿鐵咖啡，咖啡這個新黑金，不只是黑色的黃金，卻也可能是黑心的黃金。