Sundance Day 2 – Friday Part 2
This is the third in a series of Sundance Film Festival entries.
Black Gold is about coffee, where it comes from and where it’s going. Buying and selling. It’s also about the people on all sides, farmers, buyers, growers, roasters, sellers and drinkers. Coffee is a multi-billion dollar industry, but the people farming the coffee are making next to nothing while the New York Stock Exchange controls the price of coffee making the rich richer and poor even poorer. It’s a sad predicament. Brothers Marc and Nick Francis starting making Black Gold three years ago and it is their first feature documentary.
After Black Gold I needed a break so I popped over to the PBS party at the Filmmaker’s Lodge. PBS and Sundance go hand in hand. Pat Mitchell was there to talk about her time at PBS and how special it has been. She was thrilled with the turnout and proud to be a part of both PBS and Sundance for one last time before she steps down from her position as president and CEO of PBS.
I had to make it back to the Holiday Village (a small movie theater where they hold press screenings) to see Thin, the new doc by prominent youth culture photographer Lauren Greenfield. 1 in 7 young American women has an eating disorder. Thin goes inside a Florida rehabilitation center with unprecedented access to reveal the lives and psychoses of several young women with eating disorders. The film is compelling as the viewer truly wants these women to get well, to be healthy again. According to the press notes 10-14% of people with anorexia will die from the illness and watching the film makes me think that’s a low number. Thin is an incredibly bleak and unnerving film and not really the one I wanted to see before bed. But…Day 3 is another day.