Star of Coffee and Trade Documentary to Attend Showing at University of Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The star of the documentary Black Gold, Tadesse Meskela, will be on the University of Arkansas campus as the film is shown at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, April 3. The event is free and open to faculty, staff, students and the public. The showing will take place in the First Security Auditorium in Willard J. Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus.

A question and answer session with Meskela, general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, will take place after the film.

Café Bom Dia, a fair trade and organic coffee company, and the Applied Sustainability Center in the Sam M. Walton College of Business is sponsoring the presentation. The film tells the story of the 74,000 struggling coffee farmers around the world and the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade. It traces one man’s mission to gain a fair price for coffee.

“We believe, as part of our mission to educate businesses and the public about world sustainability issues, that this film will provide eye-opening insights into the coffee industry and a fairer trading system,” said Michele Halsell, managing director of the Applied Sustainability Center. “Sustainability defined more broadly includes social impacts as well as environmental impacts.”

Black Gold had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at the Melbourne International, Rio De Janeiro International, and London film festivals.

The co-directors and producers, Nick and Marc Francis, wrote, “We decided to make Black Gold 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 Ethiopia coffee farmers, known for producing some of the best quality coffee in the world, were also caught up in this new food crisis. Given that the global coffee industry was booming, making record-profits for the largest multi-nationals, we felt this was a story that had to be told.”

The Applied Sustainability Center, an interdisciplinary initiative of the Walton College, works with a wide range of partners for the rapid development of sustainable business practices and to promote their application across the retail and consumer goods industries. In 2007, the University of Arkansas established the Applied Sustainability Center with a $1.5 million gift from the Wal-Mart Foundation Inc.