During his recent concert tour of the South, Tom Waits mused aloud, "Have you noticed how you can't find a bad cup of coffee anymore?"

Waits has a point here in the Age of Latte. There's a Starbucks charging four bucks for a cup of exotic java on every corner in America. Whatever happened to a plain ol' cup o' Joe for a quarter?

Someone in the beans biz is making a killing - and, according to the documentary "Black Gold," it sure isn't the farmers growing coffee in the country where it all started.

"Black Gold," which is being shown this weekend by the Tallahassee Film Society at the All Saints Cinema, follows the caffeine trail back to Ethiopia, where coffee has been cultivated since the ninth century or earlier. Coffee gets its name from Kaffa, a province in Ethiopia.

The film focuses on Tadesse Meskela, a passionate and proud African who represents a co-op of 74 coffee farmers in southern Ethiopia. If your only image of Ethiopia is of desert and famine from the '80s, prepare to be wowed by the nation's lush mountains and rain forests.

Although they're not starving, the barefoot farmers labor under impoverished conditions growing some of the most primo, sought-after beans in the global marketplace. Meskela is aware of how much a cup of coffee costs in Seattle and fights to get a fair price for his clients.

In the meantime, filmmakers Marc Francis and Nick Francis bounce around the globe from England to Italy to the U.S. talking to buyers, commodity traders and other global players who set the prices in the coffee trade. If you like your espresso with a double shot of guilt, then "Black Gold" ought to do the trick.

Guilt trip aside, by the end of the movie you'll be craving a two-gallon cup of Ethiopian coffee. The Tallahassee Film Society will take care of that java-jones by offering special post-screening tastings of the coffees featured in the film.

Black Gold

Directors: Marc Francis, Nick Francis

Running time: 77 minutes

Rating: Not rated and there's very little objectionable material

Showing: 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday at All Saints Cinema, 918 1/2 Railroad Ave. in the Amtrak rail station. Admission is $6, $5 for TFS members and students.

Contact: 386-4404 or go to www.tallahassee films.com