CV

wallets become one of the most important places where we get to exercise our political beliefs. The company that tells the most authentic story wins the socially conscious consumer and in the process defines the terms by which labor will be valued.

 

Entering into this complex landscape, with the launching of his Red Bay coffee brand, is Oakland-based African-American entrepreneur and artist Keba Konte. My film will focus on Keba’s efforts to develop the boutique coffee brand Red Bay, and his desire to provide good jobs to his community, aid in the revitalization and economic diversification of his home city of Oakland, and in the process support that community’s desire to consume locally.

Historically, coffee – an essential element of the artisan foodie culture of the Bay Area and beyond – has been defined/imaged as brown people in “developing third world” countries engaged in the labor-intensive low waged jobs, and white roasters at the other end of the equation cultivating consumers “capable” of discerning the finer aspects of their products. Red Bay upends this coffee cart, adding some color into the mix while redistributing the profits equitably along the supply chain. Keba is one of the few African American roasters in California and he is building a highly diverse workforce that will share in 100% of the profits; this is an inclusive model that captures the energy of Oakland’s efforts to build sustainable and diverse communities.

 

The film will also follow Keba as he tracks coffee back to its single source, back to the origins of the coffee plant, the wild coffee forest of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the only place were coffee grows wild, the home of its genetic diversity, and the true starting point of this Bay Area story. Common Ground will follow Keba’s attempts to construct a direct bridge of labor and trade between two communities on opposite sides of the planet: Oakland and Ethiopia’s Jima Region where the Tracon Trading Gera Coffee Plantation Project is located. In collaboration with Ethiopian soil scientist Ambessaw Assegued, who has been working since 1993 to protect the indigenous coffee forest of his country, we will mirror our approach in the Bay Area filming. In both locations, we will feature two to three main characters that are central to the story, interweaving the lives of all players into a rich tapestry that reveals our common ground, our common hopes and dreams, through the story of individuals fighting to make a decent living. Coffee is our vehicle to this common ground and Keba and his efforts to launch Red Bay are the spine that gives this story its structure.

 

My interest as a filmmaker goes beyond telling this compelling story that can be seen as a David and Goliath myth where the small independent goes up against large corporations in a competition over who has the more authentic story to tell about sustainable labor practices. This film is also centered around questions of how one constructs a story that an audience is convinced aligns with their personal beliefs; this a how that the coffee brand is attempting to manage and it is also a how that the film is attempting to navigate in its examination of the marketing of labor and how authenticity factors therein. Here I hesitate to use the word authenticity, because once authenticity is tied to processes of construction, the questions of manipulation enter into the equation, and the idea of manipulation is often seen as being in opposition to anything deemed authentic. But this is part of the delicate and complicated terrain that the project will explore, the construction of authenticity. This terrain contains sophisticated consumers who understand how products are being marketed and these consumers regularly read beneath the surface in search of the truth. A case in point is the recently failed Starbucks “race together” campaign, where the company lacked the social authenticity to lead a discussion on race relations in America, a conversation that it attempted to broker through the cash register.

 

Although this is not a project of media analysis, media campaigns will occupy a central place in the project. Today, with the democratization of technology, it is possible for small independent companies to produce media products of a quality equal to those of large corporations. And small socially-conscious organizations understand the need to engage in public relations through the deployment of strategic media products. As a community-oriented small business man, Keba has a story to tell that is rooted in the Bay Area and this story will be compared and contrasted against the story of its market place competition, through the comparison of the media products that each player generates. Part of my interest as a filmmaker centers also on the ways in which media literacy and production have become central to all of our lives and central to who we believe ourselves to be both individually and socially.

 

The majority of this project will not take the form of a talking head documentary; rather, the subjects of the film will engage in their daily activities and the camera will observe, at times directing them to re-perform actions as adjustments are needed to further the goals of the story.  Because many of the activities to be photographed are daily and repetitive, this approach will allow for the construction of shot sequences that describe action with a visual language that is far more movie-like in nature than a standard documentary. Enclosed within this cinematic structure will be the marketing media products that are generated by the coffee producers themselves. This encapsulation will allow for comparisons between the different modes of production and storytelling and will point to the ways in which authenticity is always a construction. The questions then become: What is considered the more authentic construction? What is the basis for this evaluation?  Who decides? And, finally, how do race and class factor therein? Common Grounds will wrestle with these underexplored questions essential to the Bay Area’s cultural identity.