Blood Diamond, 2006, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly
Blood Diamond is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 adventure/drama/thriller film. It was directed and produced by Edward Zwick. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance the conflicts. On January 23, 2007, it was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou).
Blood Diamond is the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. It was composed by Academy Award nominated composer James Newton Howard.
De Beers maintains the trade in conflict diamonds has been reduced from 4% to 1% by the Kimberley Process. It has been suggested the company pushed for the film to contain a disclaimer saying the events are fictional and in the past; however, De Beers has denied this.
More recently, the New York Post has reported Warner Bros. Pictures promised 27 child and teenage film extras, who were amputees, prosthetics upon completion of filming. Several months after the completion of filming, the prosthetics had not been supplied, and it was reported the studio told amputees they would wait until the December release of the film to maximize the public relation boost. In the meantime private charity Eastern Cape assisted in supplying prosthetics to the amputees.
These allegations were countered by an article in L.A. Weekly where it was stated that Warner Bros. did not promise 27 children and teenage amputees prosthetics, but that the cast and crew raised between $200,000 and $400,000 to begin the "Blood Diamond Fund" which was then matched by Warner Bros. and "administered by a Maputo-based international accountancy firm under the supervision of Laws and João Ribeiro, the production managers in Mozambique.
The film comes in the midst of an upsurge in mass media promotion of the conflict diamond trade, also highlighted in the media by rapper Kanye West in his song "Diamonds from Sierra Leone," a VH1 documentary about current conditions in Sierra Leone called Bling, and a non-fiction expose called The Heartless Stone.
The film The Empire in Africa purports that the RUF was in fact fighting for the liberation of Sierra Leone and did not cause more abuse than the government and western armies.Wikipedia
