More Press Clips: Diamonds and Rust

Golden Gate Award Jury Statement (February 2001):

"The jury is pleased to present a Golden Gate Award to "Diamonds and Rust" for its candid and unflinching portrayal of off shore diamond miners in southern Africa. Employing skillful cinema verité techniques, the filmmakers were successful in making the dynamics, tensions, frustrations and oppression palpable and real to the viewer. We are grateful to Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz for reminding us that inhumane labor practices exist amidst the glamour of diamonds."

Ha'aretz Newspaper / By Batya Gor

"The documentary Diamonds and Rust shatters romantic fantasies about the glamour of the diamond. This is not a movie about sailors fighting the great sea or missing their beloved girls on the shore nor is this a movie about men joined together fighting for a common faith . . . Diamonds and Rust is a movie about a group of men trying to make a living while being used and trampled by a giant conglomerate . . ."

"In an instance, the ship becomes a miniature of the whole world. A place were human beings fight amongst them self like grasshoppers while being controlled by forces that are stronger then them. Through this view of life on the ship, it indeed seems that colonialism is still alive and kicking unchanged from past centuries".

Variety / Dennis Harvey (May 13, 2001)

Diamonds and Rust, a stark verite look at 90 long days aboard a gem-mining trawler in southern African waters. Helmers Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz received permission to film everyday life on the Spirit of Namibia from diamond exporter De Beers, but result -- which shows fraying tempers, racist attitudes, a deteriorating vessel and front office indifference -- hardly flatters the company. Apart from their usual equipment problems, long hours, longer contracted stints (sometimes going months without leave) and the sheer claustrophobic boredom of an industrial life at sea, the Spirit crew has a special grief source at present: newly arrived Israeli security manager Danny Levin who manages to alienate virtually everyone. But the white South African company men aren't much more likable in their contempt for the underpaid Namibian deck hands whose national wealth is being carted off. A Cuban captain and cook try to keep the peace. Expertly edited chronicle reveals plenty -- little of it pleasant -- en-route.

DOX Magazine / Tue Steen Muller (May, 2001)

Diamonds and Rust is a classic inside, vérité look at the way we have divided the world. Sadly enough, all your prejudices are confirmed in this film about a diamond mining ship off the Namibian coast. On the upper decks you meet white people and a couple of Cubans and on the lower decks, black people and some other Cubans working hard for low wages. The white people pick the diamonds under camera surveillance. The black people do the dirty work. Somewhere far away from Namibia and from the film itself, rich people are selling and buying the diamonds. Why watch the film if nothing is new? Because the filmmakers brilliantly succeed in making the characters come across as human beings. The stereotyped picture is broken thanks to the two filmmakers who filmed there for months. Once again we are reminded that time is precious in documentary filmmaking.

Diamonds symbolize wealth. A ship digging up the diamonds from the sea off the Namibian coast symbolizes our world in miniature. With its problems, conflicts, joy and anger. With several nationalities on board whose skin colors differ, the scene is set for tension and racism. The pay is low and their cabins cramped. They don't have any private life, they can listen to music, watch films on the video, eat and drink, masturbate -- or write poems, as one of the Cubans does, or write letters to family and friends back home.

"They make us work as slaves in our own country," one of the Namibian workers says, which the film demonstrates to the fullest by showing the appalling working conditions in the lower depths of the ship. "I have never been down there," states one of the South African superiors. He is not the only one who utters obviously bigoted statements, and the attitudes of a couple of white South Africans only make you feel very, very sad. You silently applaud when you hear that one of them has been -- literally -- pissed on by a black worker. The "top asshole," as he is called by one of his colleagues, is the Israeli manager on board, who gets into conflicts with everyone. They danced on board the day he left the ship to go to his pregnant wife!

Even he comes across as a character, if not to love, as that would be an exaggeration, but to be interested in. The Cubans, especially the captain of the ship, are the darlings of this film that has been made with a lot of warmth and curiosity. The point of view is clear: there is a sharp class division on this ship, but basically they are all losers. The winner would never dream of watching this fascinating and powerful slice of life.

The Independent / By Natan Gelgud (May 2, 2001)

DoubleTake's films and its slogan deserve critical attention! . . . One of the best films at DoubleTake approaches its subject with a spontaneous energy that illustrates rather than preaches. Diamonds and Rust, by Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz, is an Israeli film that takes place entirely on board a ramshackle diamond mining ship off the coast of Africa. The crew is made up of Europeans, Africans and Cubans. To put it simply: They all hate each other. It is as though Do the Right Thing were transplanted from Brooklyn to the boat in Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God. The racial tension on board the ship never relents, and most of the white officers are openly racist. The danger of the boat actually sinking is ever-present, amidst talk of mutiny by some of the Namibian members of the crew.

We're offered no narration and no conventional storyline in Diamonds. Certain visual refrains keep the film structured, such as the television monitor that is linked to the security camera in the diamond room. This motif works like a series of Chinese boxes, as we watch microcosms contained in microcosms. It's no exaggeration to say that Diamonds and Rust exemplifies what documentaries can and should be. We can be sure that even if the subject were not so grand as a sinking boat with a colonialist labor order, Barash and Shatz still would have offered an accomplished entry. Rather than deciding on a story in advance and shooting the relevant parts, these filmmakers have put a subject on display, actively engaging the viewer all the way to the brilliant final shot . . .

. . . Films like Diamonds and Rust, remind us of the capabilities of documentaries. Documentaries have the ability to capture moments of reality that are too often overlooked, and the potential to be accomplished works of art that stand on their own. While narrative films come as an aesthetic package, documentaries can turn the significant into the revelatory.

St. Petersburg Times / By Mike Wilson (May 8, 2001)

. . . Also milling about were Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz, young Israeli filmmakers whose mild personalities belie the grit and power of their film, Diamonds and Rust. They spent 90 days aboard a diamond-dredging ship in the Diamond Zone off the African coast -- and DeBeers and the Namibian government, the ship's owners, aren't going to like the result. The film makes plain that DeBeers values diamonds more than it does the people who dig them up. Black people, one white diamond worker says, "Are a different species." Namibians on the ship work seven days a week for $125 a month. "A diamond is fiction. It's public relations," Barash said in an after-screening chat. "That's what DeBeers is good with." Canadian TV has bought Diamonds and Rust and Europe is interested. No word yet about the U.S.

IndieWIRE / San Francisco International Film Festival (May 7, 2001)

Adi Barash's all-too-real documentary "Diamonds and Rust" (Israel) proves that apartheid is alive and well on the deck of a trawler sucking the resources, not to mention the soul, out of the Namibian coast. The white ship officers' hostility to the crew of color extends to the filmmakers, who endured a hellish season onboard.

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