Raising awareness of climate change with every cup of coffee
| Summary
The Last Drop portrays how climate change continues to wreak havoc on the coffee industry through first-person narratives from those who grow, produce and consume coffee. An exhaustive look at the social, cultural and political ramifications of the new coffee climate replaces dry science with personal stories to document how the deep cultural thread of coffee is woven through our lives and culture, and how those lives and cultures have been forced to change. This new normal affects everything from how we start our day to the rights of indigenous peoples. The Last Drop (TLD) will detail how the effects of the new coffee climate influence the lives of every actor in the chain of coffee from seed to sale, as well as the welfare and freedoms of countries dependent on coffee for the continuance of centuries-old ways of life. In the United States alone, ramifications range from how we are governed to a woman’s right to choose. The tone of TLD will be inspiring and thought provoking, the lasting and indelible impact of the documentary lies in its ability to raise awareness of climate change with every cup of coffee.
| Overview
| Overview
| Overview
| Overview
| Overview
The Last Drop Is a feature-length, digitally-captured documentary that will drive awareness of climate change with every cup of coffee. Intended for a worldwide audience, the last drop will be of particular interest to countries in the EU, the United States and Canada, as those countries consume 40% of the coffee that is downed worldwide on a daily basis. Audiences in the coffee producing countries of Africa and Central and South America have a vested interest in the film as well, being the countries most immediately and dramatically affected by the changing climate of coffee.
While other documentaries have, in the past, addressed the issues of climate change and coffee, many focus on facts and statistics and on people who produce our coffee in some far away lands, oftentimes failing to land the punch where it hurts the most. The best efforts of a former US vice-president had trouble convincing the majority of the American public (and, most importantly, conservative legislatures) that Climate Change was actually a thing. The Last Drop brings climate change to every coffee drinker’s morning ritual, to their homes, the coffee shop down the street, and their communities, detailing how this crisis is more, so much more, than coffee. Take, as example, the 2016 presidential election, driven by an isolationist “Make America Great Again” approach that demonized immigrants for upending the American way of life. Former President Trump never backed down from his stereotyped characterization and motivations of these refugees, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” What was once a third rail in American politics, this new anti-immigrationist stance proved to be effective in incentivising an unprecedented wave of conservative voters, emboldening newly elected legislators to enact laws that threaten everything from our environment (withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord), to civil liberties (the unconscionable discriminatory policy of the Muslim Ban), one of Trump's first acts as President.
As it is estimated that 50-30 percent of the migrant caravan heading to the US are made up of disenfranchised agricultural workers from Guatemala, Honduras and other Central American coffee producing nations, TLD illustrates the direct relationship climate change has on the outcomes of elections in the US, as well as the negative effects of this pervasive and misguided blame being placed on climate change refugees. As only one small example, hate crimes against Latinos in the US are at an all time high. Just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a massacre at a Walmart in El Paso targeting Hispanics killed 22 people. One was a German tourist. 8 were Mexican Nationals. 13 were Americans.
| Sound
The soundtrack for TLD provides an opportunity to show how coffee has permeated every aspect of our culture from all walks of life in every generation since recorded music. All genres of popular music have found a way to celebrate coffee in song. In the EU and the Americas this includes everything from the stylistic jazz treatments of Ella Fitzgerald to Nina Simone, the soulful sounds of R&B masters Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin, lending her voice to ‘The Best Part of Waking Up,’ a song written expressly to sell Folgers Coffee. Brit rock sensations Cream and Blur and the indie representations of Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee clearly example coffee's allure for consumers of counter culture music.
| Visual Style
Stylistically, the film will weave a series of first-person narratives around the central theme of real-life consequences of having to live with the threat of an ever advancing, unabating tide and the subsequent real-time impacts currently threatening the lives and livelihoods of coffee producers. Interviews will rarely be formal sit-downs and staged question and answer sessions, rather they will be shot handheld, and captured conversationally. This approach lends intimacy to the characters and the discussions, and brings to the screen a sense of heightened tension, especially as it contrasts with the slow, steady pans of the natural world. The thoughtful gaze of the camera moves from the staggering, peaceful beauty of the morning, air heavy with mist, to the chaotic, quotidian affairs of getting the kids off to school, making dinner, or manipulating shrinking budgets to include an allowance for a birthday gift for the youngest member of the coffee-producing family. Not content to leave the story in only the hands of coffee producers, however, TLD will bring the crisis to the barista responsible for crafting your cup of commuter brew, to your local coffee shop and to your kitchen table. Sobering statistics of the new climate reality are revealed through personal stories shared in intimate conversations with baristas, consumers, coffee executives and buyers from the largest coffee consuming nations, whose lives, livelihoods and way of life (paradoxically implicated in contributing disproportionately to climate change) are also at grave risk. In doing so, TLD brings the crisis home.