Fire Of Love (2022)

Volvanoes and volcanic eruption is captivating to watch, and this is a story about love of volcanoes, but also about love. Maurice Krafft met his wife Katia on a volcano--they were both vulcanologists who were fascinated by what happened with eruptions from the center of the earth, a window into what happens inside the planet. What made them different was that they were also filmmakers and story tellers. They took what fascinated them and let all of us be fascinated along with them. Their filmwork financed their continued exploration of volacanoes. Their union not only produced a trove of astonishing imagery that can be endlessly reworked and put to a variety of uses, it gave any future filmmaker who wanted to retell their story a gallery of metaphors for love, passion, obsession, and commitment. From the opening images of the Kraffts driving a Jeep through snowy tundra and pausing to unstick the vehicle from an ice patch, shot after shot serves its own narrative function and also as a symbol for passion and commitment to their craft and their work. It started in the late 1960s and ended in 1991 when a pyroclastic flow on Japan's Mt. Unzen wiped them out along with a group of 41 scientists, firefighters, and journalists. On the one hand it was a tragedy but on the other, it seemed inevitable from the beginning that this was how it was likely to end.