The White Diamond

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The White Diamond
The White Diamond DVD cover
Directed by	Werner Herzog
Produced by	Werner Herzog
Written by	Werner Herzog
Narrated by	Werner Herzog
Starring	Graham Dorrington Werner Herzog Dieter Plage
Music by	Ernst Reijseger
Release date(s)	2004
Running time	90 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

The White Diamond is a 2004 documentary film by Werner Herzog. 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 which he plans to fly over the forest canopies of Guyana. It features music composed by Ernst Reijseger, which was re-used in Herzog's 2005 film The Wild Blue Yonder.

Most of the film focuses on Dorrington's flights near Kaieteur Falls, in Guyana. 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. The film also explores the Kaieteur Falls themselves, a local man named Marc Anthony Yhap, a local diamond miner, and the white-tipped swifts (Aeronautes montivagus) which roost in an inaccessible cave behind the falls.

v • d • e Films directed by Werner Herzog 1960s Herakles (1962) • Game in the Sand (1964) • The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967) • Last Words (1967) • Signs of Life (1968) • The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) Precautions Against Fanatics (1969) 1970s Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) • Handicapped Future (1971) • Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) • Fata Morgana (1971) • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) • The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) • The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) • Heart of Glass (1976) • No One Will Play With Me (1976) • How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976) • Stroszek (1977) • La Soufrière (1977) • Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978) • Woyzeck (1978) 1980s Huie's Sermon (1981) • God's Angry Man (1981) • Fitzcarraldo (1982) • Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984) • The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984) • Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) • Portrait Werner Herzog (1986) • Cobra Verde (1987) • The French as seen by... (1988) • Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun (1989) 1990s Film Lesson 1-4 (1990) • Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990) • Jag Mandir (1991) • Scream of Stone (1991) • Lessons of Darkness (1992) • Bells from the Deep (1993) • The Transformation of the World Into Music (1994) • Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) • Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) • The Lord and the Laden (1999) • My Best Fiend (1999) 2000s Wings of Hope (2000) • Invincible (2001) • Pilgrimage (2001) • Ten Minutes Older (2002) • Wheel of Time (2003) • The White Diamond (2004) • Grizzly Man (2005) • The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) • Rescue Dawn (2007) • Encounters at the End of the World (2007) • The Cheese and the Worms (2008)