Black Island 1994

Directed by Rob Rombout

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.