FROM THE GROUND UP

From the Ground Up is an experimental documentary about the natural resources, people, and machinery that provide us with the one of our ordinary daily pleasures. The film shows all the stages of coffee production - growing, picking, processing, distribution, brewing and selling - as a way to address the fact that most products we use have had to pass through the hands of hundreds of people in numerous countries.

Friedrich uses minimal narration and text because she primarily asks the viewer to observe and contemplate the chain of production, from a hillside in Guatemala covered with hundreds of coffee seedlings to a pushcart in Manhattan serving coffee to the early morning workers. And once in a while, bits of the song «Java Jive» underlie the image, with phrases often being repeated to mimic the relentless and monotonous nature of most coffee production work and to underscore the fact that this «loveable» product comes at a price for the people who make it available for us.