199452 minDocumentary
L'Île noire
Black Island
In the North Sea some sixty thousand people live offshore. On the F.G. McClintock drilling rig, eighty men and one woman work around the clock in search of black gold, while a stand-by vessel circles them for their safety. In such a closed space, facing the wild sea, there is little room to say how one feels. “The noise is everywhere, you can’t get away from it,” says Brian Spencer, the toolpusher. After Nord Express and the Queen Elizabeth 2, Rob Rombout films another small society behind closed doors.
Press
“Rob Rombout gives a large place to moods and feelings in this complex working world, which usually makes a rule of ignoring them.”
« Rob Rombout donne une grande place aux états d’âme et aux sentiments dans ce milieu de travail complexe qui se fait habituellement loi de les ignorer. »
“One strongly feels this attention, rather rare, to the gestures of human work.”
« On ressent fortement cette mise en valeur, assez rare, des gestes du travail humain. »
- 1994Quand la mer sent la boue en mer du NordDominique Legrand, Le Soir · PDF ↗
- 1995Huis clos en mer du NordYvon Le Vaillant, Le Nouvel Observateur · PDF ↗
- 2022A microcosmMarc-Emmanuel Mélon, The Mise en Scène of the Real, Yellow Now, provisional translation · PDF ↗
Photographs
Technical sheet
- Title
- L'Île noire
- Year
- 1994
- Runtime
- 52 min
- Countries
- Belgium, France
- Languages
- English
- Production
- Nota Bene, with Wallonie Image Production, RTBF, BRTN and France 2
- Availability
- On request
- Direction
- Rob Rombout
- Script
- Rob Rombout, Jean-Philippe Laroche
- Image
- Louis-Philippe Capelle
- Assistant camera
- Jean van Gut
- Sound
- Philippe Sellier
- Editing
- Adriana Moreira de Oliveira
- Mix
- Jean-François Gosselin
- Music
- Jean-Louis Daulne
- Producer
- Jean-Philippe Laroche
- With
- Mick Pollard, Brian Spencer, Derrick, Glenn A. Musick, Terry Johnson
Selections
- 1995Cinéma du Réel, Paris
- 1995Netherlands Film Festival, Utrecht
- 1995Film Fest Gent