We’re just coming to the end of an incredible week in Toronto screening Black Gold for our Canadian premiere for the Hotdocs film festival. With queues of people around the block, our first screening at the Bloor Cinema sold out to over 750 people. The audiences were fantastic – there were so many people moved by Black Gold and inspired to take action.

We had an engaging Q&A fielding questions all about the issues raised in the film. One particular question ran on and on defending the role of Starbucks in the coffee market. It turned out that the question was from a Starbucks employee!

At all our screenings since Sundance we’ve managed to team up with local coffee companies and Toronto was no exception. Inspired by seeing Black Gold, Balzac’s coffee house have been actively promoting the film to all their customers by using Black Gold coffee sleeves. They also brewed up some fair trade Ethiopian coffee for people queuing up to see Black Gold.

Thanks Balzacs – you give us hope – If every independent coffee house promotes Black Gold in a similar way we can get our message out there.

Apart from screening Black Gold to the public, we took part of the Docs in Schools program during the festival. This was an extraordinary experience as it gave us an insight into how young people would respond to the film. For the first time it became clear to us that the film could speak to different generations. We attended Q&A’s at two schools in Toronto and to a cinema audience of 500 students and teachers - on each occasion an avalanche of incisive questions overwhelmed us.

During the week the comparison was made that in the 1960’s young people were in engaged in the battle for civil rights and today they’re engaging in a new battle - the fight for the basic rights of millions of people whose livelihoods are being undermined by a rigged system of international trade. Judging from the number people who’ve joined our mailing list and contacted us asking for more information - they could be right. We’re extremely grateful to Barb Sniderman and the Hot Docs team for developing an excellent education pack and bringing the film to so many young people.

….and thanks to the Hot Docs team for putting on a great show.

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