description

3 X 1 HOUR DOCUMENTARY / 99 MINUTE FEATURE / INTERACTIVE WEB SITE

Every year, worldwide, 24 tons of diamonds are teased from the heart of the earth. Once mined they begin their year-long journey through the "pipeline," a vast, secretive network encompassing five continents and a diverse cast of characters. By the end of their journey these tiny bits of carbon will have made multi-millionaires of some and virtual slaves of others.

Boring deep into the diamond world, Diamond Road explores the multiple meanings this object has for a few of the captivating characters who are part of the diamond pipeline: an impoverished miner in Sierra Leone, a child cutter and prominent businessman in India, a celebrity jeweller and a high-end dealer in New York. Their stories are interwoven with that of an industry leader who is fighting for transparency and fair trade for diamonds. Each is on a journey to realize a dream that centres on a stone which is itself a dream, a manufactured symbol of love, purity and the sublime. What results is a multi-layered portrait of a fascinating world which is steeped in a history of intrigue, conflict, love and hope.

Listen to an interview with Diamond Road director and producer on Radio Netherlands.

Diamond Road Online

Diamond Road Online is a leading-edge synthesis of documentary, online community, and the Web 2.0 techniques of Collaborative Filtering, and Personal Recommendations  the exciting techniques behind popular sites like Flickr, Amazon.com and Del.icio.us.

Users create online profiles that launch them on a vibrant community exploration of the global diamond trade. Using a custom designed set of client tools, they can move effortlessly through the stories in a guided experience or take a more active path and explore the Diamond Road universe using our Recommendation Engine: intelligent software that analyzes what they have already seen, what other users have seen and rated, and recommends what they should see next.

Users can choose to follow a favourite character, find out more about a particular theme, or sit back and let other users or DRO tell them a tale. At any point, they can become an "editor" of the story landscape by creating, commenting on, and sharing content sequences.

Diamond Road Online harnesses the power of technology and community to build an interactive documentary that learns from each user and is defined by the community.

credits

Produced by
ROBERT LANG

Co-Producer
CORNELIA PRINCIPE

Directed by
NISHA PAHUJA

Co-Director
MANFRED BECKER

Written by
NISHA PAHUJA
JOHN KRAMER

Director of Photography
DEREK ROGERS

Editor
DAVID KAZALA

Music Composed by
KEN MYHR

Sound Recordist
AO LOO

Research
DAVID OPPENHEIM

A Kensington Communications Production
in association with TVOntario, Discovery Times, Discovery HD Theatre, History Television, Knowledge Network, Canal D, SBS-TV Australia and ZDF/ARTE

Developed with financial assistance from Telefilm Canada

Diamond Road Online was produced with the participation of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund and TVO.

reviews

"A brilliant three parter." - Jim Bawden, Starweek Magazine (Toronto Star)

"A gripping picture of the world and the myth behind the much-loved stone." - Erik Jensen, Sydney Morning Herald

awards

Diamond Road

Best Documentary Series at 23rd Annual Gemini Awards, October 2008. (Pictured: Robert Lang and Cornelia Principe accepting the award.)

Top prize for Documentary Feature at the 41st Annual WorldFest in Houston (for the feature length version of Diamond Road).

Diamond Road Online

Excellence in News/Information at the Canadian New Media Awards, October 2008.

Selected for the SIGGRAPH '08 conference, August 2008.

distribution

Premiered at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) in November 2007.

Invited to Tri-Continental Film Festival in South Africa, DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, and several other festivals around the world.

Broadcast by TVOntario, Knowledge Network, Discovery Times (USA), Discovery HD Theatre, Canal D, SBS (Australia) and ZDF/ARTE (Europe).

99 minute feature version broadcast by ZDF (Europe).

Diamond Road Online

In 2008, Diamond Road Online was selected to show at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles - a conference widely considered the world's most prestigious forum for computer graphics and interactive innovation, attended by both academic and industry leaders.

The Diamond Road Online creative team took part in the new media panel at the Realscreen Summit, a non-fiction film & television industry event in Washington, D.C.

Before going to Washington, DRO was a featured case study at DOC IT, a two-day conference on interactive documentary production put on by the Documentary Organization of Canada.