A Film About Coffee

A Film About Coffee

Bringing up this film for our Friday chat since I’ve been seeing it around. Sola Coffee Cafe had a couple showings in March and looks like Open Eye Cafe (Carrboro Coffee Roasters) will be showing it TONIGHT, 7pm, and again in April.

Availability: If you want to take it on yourself before then, “A Film About Coffee” is strictly on vimeo. Price is $4.99 (Stream) to rent for 72 hours or you can buy it for $12.99 (Stream or Download).

And, in what seems like divine intervention, this movie is the perfect pairing to what we have, and will, talk about. So, while I want you to go see it, feel free to keep reading and see what the fuss is about.

“A Film About Coffee is a love letter to, and meditation on, specialty coffee.  It examines what it takes, and what it means, for coffee to be defined as “specialty,” (from the film’s “About” section).

I think talking about the film as a “Love letter” describes it perfectly. What goes into a love letter? Passion, history, aesthetics, a sense of unity; I think its all there. But it’s not about a love letter so much between us and coffee, but that relationship between coffee and where it comes from.

Divided into balanced sequences of coffee experts such as Darrin Daniel (Green Coffee Buyer, Stumptown Coffee Roasters) or Katie Cargiulo (Barista, Counter Culture Coffee & 2012 US Barista Champion) and farms from Kivu, Kenya and the Lake Yojoa Region of Honduras. You find, though, that wherever the film takes you, you’re already anticipating the inherent beauty of coffee and its form there.

It also doesn’t take long to see that this is the most beautiful film you will have seen to date. Each shot captures a new color, a new smile.

I had a friend take a look and they told me that they get it now. They see why people care about what goes into their coffee or why people like me study it. I think that is the film’s strength.

It not only grabs your attention for an hour, but makes you reevaluate the next coffee you buy. How do I want to handle this coffee? Where does it come from? Simply, why it matters.

If you’re like me, I’m ready for someone to fund my coffee origin trip. I want to get out and experience this film, visit farmers and try coffee around the world. Perhaps this comes to my first negative of the film:

I want to spend more money on coffee! If its not a new Siphon brewing system, then its just a camera to see how I can capture coffee.

The other negative I found: Vimeo? Whens the last movie you rented on Vimeo? I sat for a bit wondering how I could watch this film. I found that I could pull it up through a web browser, on my Xbox, with a controller, to watch it on my TV.

Other than that, I’m assigning this film as your homework, and I don’t think you’ll blame me for it.

“A Film about Coffee” was produced by Dalia Burde and Brandon Loper, part of a new start-up company: Avocados and Coconuts. Their ability to capture a story is evident. I think I speak for all of us in hoping they continue telling the story about coffee.

“We are a San Francisco content collective comprised of artists, travelers, idealists and risk-takers who believe that work and play can co-mingle. After all, we came together based on a mutual devotion to the values that animate our lives. Aesthetic Beauty. Restless Creativity. Living life to the fullest.”