Originally published in Cineaste Film Reviews.
The relation between volcanoes and love has a long history in Japan, as hundreds of lovers and spurned lovers have leapt to their deaths in the fiery depths of Mount Mihara for centuries…
The relation between volcanoes and love has a long history in Japan, as hundreds of lovers and spurned lovers have leapt to their deaths in the fiery depths of Mount Mihara for centuries, but most famously during the Twenties and Thirties. Later in the century, in 1991, another pair of lovers—volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft—perished at the foot of Japan’s Mount Unzen. Having rushed there to observe an imminent eruption to film and photograph it in action, they, along with forty-one journalists and firefighters, were swallowed by Unzen’s powerful excretion of moving earth. Sara Dosa’s remarkable documentary, created largely from the Kraffts’ visual archive, includes a shot of their final volcano erupting, as captured by a camera abandoned by a fleeing journalist. Although Japanese TV has only recently discovered the beauty and attraction of volcano imagery, the Kraffts had known and pursued these aspects throughout their working lives.
