That’s right — The 100% fair trade Equal Exchange was the official coffee sponsor for the American Pavilion at the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival :)
Julia of Equal Exchange (right) says Equal Exchange was invited to be the coffee sponsor, mainly cuz the American Pavilion — the HQ for the American movie industry people at the festival — was doing a greening initiative to coincide with the screening of An Inconvenient Truth.
According to the American Pavilion’s website, it’s working “in partnership with Native Energy, Stop Global Warming and Global Green” to stop global warming.
How? Through “a Pavilion-wide recycling program in addition to using recycled paper and reusable carpeting at this year’s Festival.” And of course, Equal Exchange’s coffee :)
Equal Exchange’s inclusion was well deserved; most recently, this fair trade co-op’s been raising awareness about unfair taxes against small-scale farmers in the Dominican Republic, and offering the first chocolates made with both fair trade cocoa AND fair trade sugar.
No doubt in response to the screening of the documentary Black Gold, which focuses on the Fair Trade coffee movement. The official movie’s website is down, but perhaps this is just temporary…
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/
Several of my hardened, heartless “industry” friends who saw this film in Seattle quite enjoyed it.
Comment by JIm — May 31, 2006 @ 6:12 pm
oops, wrong festival, but perhaps an interesting film to bring up anyhow.
Comment by JIm — May 31, 2006 @ 6:17 pm
That’s cool (I didn’t know at all about this)…, and unfortunately it didn’t catch the news on french channels either.
Comment by Maya — June 1, 2006 @ 1:03 am
I actually emailed those Black Gold peeps a while back when they were at Sundance, but didn’t hear back :( Glad to hear they’re getting the word out though –
Comment by Siel — June 1, 2006 @ 10:19 am