''The White Diamond'' is a 2004

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...

. It illustrates the history of aviation and depicts the struggles and triumphs of Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical engineer, who has designed and built a teardrop-shaped

airship An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

which he plans to fly over the forest canopies of

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

. It features music composed by

Ernst Reijseger Ernst Reijseger (born 13 November 1954) is a Dutch cellist and composer. He specializes in avant-garde jazz, free jazz, improvised music, and contemporary classical music and often gives solo concerts. He has worked with Louis Sclavis, Derek ...

, which was re-used in Herzog's 2005 film ''

The Wild Blue Yonder ''The Wild Blue Yonder'' is a 2005 science fiction fantasy film by German director Werner Herzog. It was presented at the 62nd Venice Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Award. It was screened in competition at the Mar del Plata Internati ...

''. Most of the film focuses on Dorrington's flights near

Kaieteur Falls Kaieteur is the world's largest single drop waterfall. Located on the Potaro River in the Kaieteur National Park, it sits in a section of the Amazon rainforest included in the Potaro-Siparuni region of Guyana. It is 226 metres (741 ft) hi ...

, in

. Dorrington discusses the mechanics of his flight, as well as his own struggles with uncertainty and the "heaviness" he feels after the death of the cinematographer

Dieter Plage Dieter or dieter may refer to: * A person committed to dieting People Dieter is a German given name (), a short form of Dietrich, from ''theod+ric'' "people ruler", see Theodoric. Given name *Dieter Althaus (born 1958), German politician ...

. The film also explores the Kaieteur Falls themselves, a local man named Marc Anthony Yhap, a diamond miner, and the white-tipped swifts (''Aeronautes montivagus'') which roost in an inaccessible cave behind the falls. The film holds a score of 83 (based on 12 reviews) on the film review aggregator website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

and a score of 90% (based on 20 reviews) on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

. The White Diamond
on

. Retrieved 2012-10-18.

Soundtrack

References

External links

* Documentary films about ballooning 2004 films 2004 documentary films Films shot in Guyana Films directed by Werner Herzog 2000s English-language films {{2000s-documentary-film-stub