Project Details
Untold Coffee Stories
Single-channel video, 4min., color.
©CLG/2006
Untold Coffee Stories is a short video created for the invitational program of the Film Kitchen Annual Celebration of 2006. For many years, they produced a festival with a competitive and an invitational section, and it would take place at the Melwood Screening Room - part of Pittsburgh Filmmakers' theaters, back then. A theme was assigned and everybody selected had to work around that. During the 2006 annual event the theme was: "coffee".
My first impulse was to investigate the origins of coffee, and after reading about the history of coffee the one aspect that kept coming to mind was the social and political circumstances of coffee production during the 20th century. One particular event triggered the creation of this video: the 1932 Massacre in El Salvador, where 30,000 peasants were killed in a single week when revolting against low wages and unfair working conditions.
“Short whispering of social conscience through the history of coffee labor.” - Bill O’Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper.