Original subtitles

This film is in memory of Katia and Maurice Krafft,

volcanologists from the Alsace region in France.

Almost everything that we are going to see is footage shot by them.

There's something so awe inspiring in it, so never seen before

that attracted me as a film-maker.

They lost their lives together, capturing the might of volcanoes.

This is their legacy.

The lives in the death of Katia and Maurice are documented in films

and books, and this here is not meant

to be another extensive biography.

What I'm trying to do here is to celebrate the wonder

of their imagery.

MUSIC: "Requiem, Op. 48: Introit et Kyrie"

This here is Katia Krafft at a volcano in Iceland.

And this is her husband, Maurice.

Alsace, eastern France.

Both were born in villages not far part of each other,

surrounded by vineyards with a deep tradition

of unchanged peasant life.

They were roaming the entire globe in pursuit of erupting volcanoes,

but they would always return to the quiet landscape

of their origin.

Katia studied geochemistry at Strasbourg University

with a goal to become a volcanologist.

Shortly later, at the same university, Maurice

began his studies in geology.

The bug of volcanoes had been in him since he was seven

when his parents took him to the Italian volcano, Stromboli.

Katia and Maurice met in Strasbourg in 1966 and never left

each other ever after.

This is the place of that death.

The southern island of Kyushu in Japan, right in the middle

of the volcano, Mount Unzen.

May 30th, 1991.

The Kraffts arrived there on that day.

The mountain had shown signs of a serious impending eruption.

When they arrived near the volcano in a rented car,

a friend and colleague, Harry Glicken, is with them.

Japanese reporters, photographers and TV crews are already there.

This is the established viewing point for the media.

Authorities have declared an evacuation advisory area

some 4km distant from the crater.

Its delineation and the movements of the Kraffts would later lead

to lasting controversies.

They were blamed for luring cameramen and journalists

into a dangerous position.

But these positions were taken days before the Kraffts arrived.

Just find where...

The smoke is? The smoke is.

Here they make a first assessment of the situation.

Small, so-called pyroclastic flows have occurred recently.

About 5km. Yeah, yeah.

Small mountain, one, two metre.

The newspapers have reported about the pyroclastic flows,

highly dangerous clouds of superheated particles and gases.

Maurice is setting up his camera.

He still shoots 16 millimetres celluloid.

The local TV crew now captures Katia, who is setting up

the tripod for her photo camera.

Maurice has problems with a battery of his zoom.

The zoom.

Oh, yeah, it's perfect.

The mountain is quiet, nothing very worth shooting right now.

Katia, Maurice and Glicken seem to be at ease.

The Japanese media people are also oblivious of the impending doom.

Whoever stayed here at this outpost, cameramen, reporters

and taxi drivers would be dead in a few days.

Helicopters can be heard in the distance.

They monitor the crater.

Police is also present maintaining the exclusion zone.

Now something important is coming.

I think we stay on the top of this hill...

Maurice just hinted at moving their position onto a hill

closer to the volcano.

Apparently this idea is taking root right now.

If there is a road going there, Katia agrees.

If you have a road, it's OK.

And here, suddenly, a small pyroclastic flow

that will stop in the distance.

Once that you have these pyroclastic flows coming

down and there is a lot to understand, to take pictures

and then to study the pictures.

And also we like very much to come in Japan because you have very good

observatories and very good volcanologists.

So we can learn a lot with them.

At last, you can meet your planned pyroclastic flow.

But that was a very small one?

Very small, yes, very small.

I hope to see bigger ones than this one,

because this is very small, really, yes.

This is one of the smallest pyroclastic flows

I have seen in my life.

Well, yesterday, it's pyroclastic flow,

it's very, very big one.

And that is the biggest one.

The cloud cover the foot of the mountain.

Oh, yes, I would like to see this kind of thing bigger.

Yes, sure.

But probably that whole part of the dome collapsed at this moment.

So maybe it will need some...

..some hours or days to make a new dome

that may collapse, part of the dome.

Sure.

This is exactly what would happen a few days later, on June 3rd,

the day they would perish.

We hope always, but we cannot be sure and we don't know nothing.

You have big blocks on the top and they have to come down.

But when?

We know that Katia had much deeper concerns

about the dangers than she would admit on camera.

In fact, there was a crisis in their relationship

because Katia wanted to leave for the Philippines,

where the volcano Pinatubo was about to erupt.

Maurice insisted he would stay no matter what,

and Katia stayed with him.

I have seen so much eruptions in 23 years

that, erm...

..even if I die tomorrow, I don't care.

The Kraffts had a few narrow escapes in their lives.

It was sheer luck.

In 1983, they chartered a boat to approach

Una-Una volcano in Indonesia.

The volcano had erupted, leaving destruction on this small island.

It does not look good.

Despite all science, volcanoes are still unpredictable.

But Katia ventures out exploring.

Maurice, following her with his camera.

SINGING

And then they come across some livestock left behind

when the island was evacuated.

The cows, thirsty and starving, seem to sense something.

The goats look uneasy as well.

LOUD THUNDER SOUND

Then there is a new eruption, menacing enough

to make the Kraffts retreat.

But they don't know what's coming very soon.

Seeing Katia here, taking her time, and Maurice clearly still filming

from the shore, we feel like hurrying them up.

They made it to safety.

There was no danger for them any more.

And then this, the entire island exploded.

Later, Katia writes in her diary...

"We would have been cooked in a second."

Three years later, 1986, the Kraffts were lucky again.

A helicopter took them to the volcano,

St Augustine, in Alaska.

LOUD EXPLOSION

When both were near the crater itself, a massive explosion

released a gigantic pyroclastic flow.

Inside the cloud, temperatures can reach way over

1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the cloud

can travel at speeds up to 400mph.

The strange thing is that what's coming at you is silent.

The pyroclastic flow comes within about 100 feet of the camera,

but Maurice does not flee.

He calmly keeps it in frame until he runs out of film.

And Katia, who took this picture, doesn't flee either.

It was a long way for the Kraffts to become the figures

in their later films.

This here is Iceland, 1968.

They did not do camera work themselves.

All the early footage was shot by Roland Haas, who had formed

a company with Maurice.

Katia and Maurice's roles were not defined yet.

Maurice, still boyish, looks uncomfortable on camera.

Katia appears to be aimless, just embellishing a shot.

Most of the time, she disappears quickly.

1970, they were on the Italian island of Vulcano.

The crater is inactive, except for some escaping steam.

Their film looks like how movies are made by tourists.

Everything is unspectacular.

Their means of transportation are as primitive as it gets.

What is interesting is that we see them doing scientific measurements.

Maurice, monitoring seismic activities, and Katia measuring

chemical compositions of gases.

And here for the first time, we see Maurice doing something

for the camera, yet to no avail.

Volcanoes have a natural attraction.

Tourists are climbing up the crater as well.

A bold young lady makes it all the way up to the rim

in high heels and a bikini.

We see them now arriving in their base camp at the bottom.

Their life is documented as if they were tourists.

The focus is on jam, bread and Italian sausage.

Two years later, there is a shift.

Now on the Italian volcano, Stromboli, they come

up with something that looks like out of a carnival.

They brought along specially made helmets.

Rather grotesque.

The idea behind it was protection against chunks of flying rocks.

And now they stage it, fake it for the camera.

They shoot several takes.

Watch the guy in the background...

I love his fake acting.

Katia seems to be embarrassed, unconvinced.

These helmets make your movements clumsy.

No serious volcanologist ever used them in the Kraffts

abandoned the idea quickly.

Soon the Kraffts were able to attract sponsors.

They made an extensive expedition to Indonesia with a van and two

smaller vehicles, all supported by the city of Mulhouse in Alsace.

Maurice began a phase where he styled himself

after the world renowned underwater film-maker, Jacques Cousteau,

wearing his trademark red woollen cap and smoking a pipe.

The Kraffts apparently found it cool to use pathetic

looking inflatable seats.

Katia's roll on camera was still diminished.

Frequently, she would be used for a scale.

She's hit by some drops of hot water.

For the camera, they repeat it several times, all fake.

Increasingly they became film-makers.

From now on, we rarely ever see them doing science.

They film others doing science.

Katia becomes a sound recordist using state-of-the-art

microphones and tape recorders.

She also takes the role of photographer.

Her pictures were published in magazines and a book,

more than 400,000 pictures of hers are in the archive...

Enough to fill several more volumes.

And here, like out of a fog, Maurice's real persona

seems to emerge.

The mask comes off.

His face raw, grown up.

Just him.

And at the same time, as if out of nowhere,

the images become grandiose.

A great film-maker is born.

This is Iceland 1973.

The small southern island of Heimaey was surprised by a trench opening

and spewing red hot lava.

Maurice captures here an apocalypse that we have never seen

before on film.

We're looking at Maurice right at the eruption.

It seems that this is more than just a volcanic event.

A fire within is taking hold of him.

And it is certainly the same with Katia.

She clearly expressed it in an interview.

"I cannot live without volcanoes."

1980, Mount St Helens, in the state of Washington.

In fact, this image was taken years before.

The volcano still has its pointed peak covered in snow.

The series of earthquakes and steam venting episodes beginning in March

signalled a major event.

Seismic recordings went wild.

On May 18th, at 8:32 in the morning, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred.

This triggered the largest landslide in recorded history

and an explosion.

The horizontal blast accelerated to 670mph.

Within a radius of eight miles, everything was obliterated

and up to a distance of 19 miles,

the shock wave flattened every single tree.

Katia and Maurice, having acquired a reputation to be the earliest

on the scene, this time, came a few days late.

Approaching the zone of destruction, everything looks normal.

The forests are still standing.

Then 20 miles away from the volcano, first signs of devastation.

MAN VOCALISES

Mid-'80s, Hawaii.

The Kraffts, increasingly, are attracted to the magnificence

and mystery of the inner Earth flowing to the surface.

OPERATIC MUSIC PLAYS

They are no longer volcanologists -

they are artists who carry us, the spectators, away in a realm

of strange beauty.

This is a vision that exists only in dreams.

There is nothing more that should be said.

We can only watch in awe.

OPERATIC MUSIC CONTINUES

There is a fascination about the beauty of volcanoes,

but they have caused terrible disasters.

This is the summit of Nevado del Ruiz, in Colombia.

Its peak was covered with glaciers and snow that had accumulated

for decades.

At 9:09pm on November 13, 1985, an eruption occurred.

It was only 3% of what was ejected from Mount St Helens,

but the glowing lava in pyroclastic flows

melted the ice almost instantly.

The white summit turned dark.

This was filmed by the Kraffts a few days after the event.

And this is the flank of the mountain where the water and mud

came down, growing larger and larger.

So-called lahars formed.

RUMBLING

What we see here was filmed by the Kraffts

years earlier, in the Alps of Italy.

It is completely unrelated to Nevado del Ruiz,

but we can get an idea of what came down in Colombia.

Water, eroded soil and dislodged rocks, came sweeping down.

However, the lahar in Columbia was 100 feet deep.

RUMBLING AND CRASHING

STEADY RUMBLING

It took more than an hour until it reached the town of Armero,

some 30 miles away.

By then, the huge stream had widened to a kilometre, sweeping

through the town.

Out of 29,000 inhabitants, over 20,000 of them perished.

Only a few buildings on higher ground remain standing.

This was the fourth deadliest disaster in recorded history.

What we see here used to be the centre of town.

The power of the flood can be imagined by the size

of boulders it carried along.

There used to be a bridge here.

These here are lucky survivors.

Lucky because no-one was warned.

The volcano had given signals so strong that later a volcanologist

said, "The volcano was screaming, 'I'm about to explode.'"

After the eruption,

there was more than an hour time until the flood hit the town.

It would have taken most of the inhabitants just 200 metres

to reach higher ground.

We have to imagine the water rose higher than the bulldozers.

The level of the mud flow reached almost to the top of the building

in the background,

and yet a safe elevation is right behind.

Here we see the high mark of the mud flow.

Days after the flood, the soft mud was still treacherous.

It was 15 feet deep and had swallowed up cattle

and humans, alike.

To cross it requires some ingenuity.

Over the remains of Armero hovered the stench of carrion.

There was silence.

Here, we can see cows that sank into the mud days ago.

They are irretrievable.

They will die here.

And then human remains.

In the magnitude of the tragedy,

they were still left where they died.

The Kraffts wanted to see the source of the disaster,

the summit of Nevado del Ruiz, over 17,000 feet high.

This is where the flood had come down.

The marks in the rock show the gigantic magnitude of the lahar.

Peasants tried to reach cut-off villages

that had suffered great loss of life as well.

Bad visibility stopped Katia and Maurice from climbing higher.

Turning away from the volcano,

they focused their attention on the suffering of the survivors.

And this marked a fundamental shift in their work.

They were shocked by the failure to alert the local population.

In order to raise awareness of the dangers of volcanoes,

they were looking for media attention, and because of that,

they increasingly became the daredevils.

And parallel to that, their gaze became less scientific

and more and more humanistic.

MAN VOCALISES

The shift did not happen overnight, as can be seen in footage

the Kraffts filmed in Indonesia a year before the tragedy of Armero.

The volcanic eruption had obscured the sky.

Day turned into night.

These traffic scenes were shot at midday.

It took hours until some light returned.

Dust was everywhere.

And the thought creeps up to me

that we are watching a scenario of the future.

Could this pollution happen without a volcano,

just caused by human behaviour?

STRING MUSIC PLAYS

MALE GROUP SINGING

El Chichon in the south of Mexico.

Every volcano the Kraffts filmed had its own heartbreak -

destruction, dust and the agony of a land left and forsaken by God.

Or, more banal,

are we here in a Spaghetti Western turned nightmare?

WOMAN SINGS IN SPANISH

And then there is footage the Kraffts created

that has no volcanoes in it.

They followed their curiosity.

They saw the world no-one else had seen.

They left behind a mosaic that is mysterious

and stunningly original.

FIREWORK LIGHTS, FIRES

MAN VOCALISES

WAVES CRASH

OPERATIC SINGING

Hawaii.

The Kraffts went there repeatedly.

This is where there is permanent volcanic activity.

This is where fire meets water.

It appears to me the Kraffts were shooting a whole film

about creation in the making.

They just did not have the time left to edit it.

SINGING CONTINUES

WIND RUSHES

A good part of what we discover in the archive of the Kraffts

is sheer hardship.

Many of the viewers of this will probably be glad not to be there,

but I would give much if I could have been their companion.

WOMAN SINGS IN SPANISH

This is what the Mexicans would call "Pura Vida" -

life raw, intense and pure, life with meaning, at its fullest.

We witness a travail of their voyages, cars, horses,

and we pray the horses will make it.

SINGING CONTINUES

Back in Japan, Mount Unzen, June 2nd, 1991.

The situation is unchanged -

no eruption, no big pyroclastic flow.

The Kraffts and Harry Glicken are holding their position,

musing about the small events at the volcano.

Maybe the events they talk about,

you know, when they say "20 pyroclastic flows per day",

maybe... They say it's because of the seismicity,

so maybe they even count the small ones, very small ones.

Maybe they don't really see them.

They're just small ones... Yeah, just... Uh-huh.

Harry Glicken decides to make better use of his time.

He leaves the Kraffts with their cameras in order to study sediments

in the river flowing from the volcano.

His story is curious.

He had unbelievable luck

when Mount St Helens exploded some ten years prior.

He held an observation outpost close to the volcano.

After working six days straight,

he had to leave for an interview with his university.

His research adviser, despite safety concerns,

volunteered to replace him at his post.

This volunteer died in the cataclysm of that day.

In the lottery of the universe,

Harry Glicken this time would make his fatal move.

He rejoined the Kraffts at their camera position

and thus died with them.

Up near the mountain, boredom has taken hold.

Many of the camera people are sleeping.

The volcano, only partially visible, is just quiet.

Later, we will learn that even this position -

just outside the exclusion zone - is not safe.

The pyroclastic flow will wipe it out as well.

Only some locals make it to safety.

And now what we see appears to be from a new vantage point.

The Japanese cameraman who shot this image

probably has joined the Kraffts to move into an advanced position.

It was their last.

What remains of the Kraffts are their amazing images.

OPERATIC SINGING

In looking into their archive,

we discover images not only of volcanoes,

but landscapes that nobody has ever filmed like them.

SINGING CONTINUES

Some of it has a quality of dreams.

Like in a biblical apocalypse, stones are raining from the sky...

SINGING

..and rocks are giving up their assigned nature

just to solidly sit there.

They tumble.

SINGING

And plants and creatures and our whole planet

seem to be somewhere in outer space.

SINGING CONTINUES

Minutes away from the catastrophe,

Mount Unzen has released a massive pyroclastic flow.

We have the radio contact of our Japanese cameraman with his base.

RADIO CHATTER

They order him to evacuate at once.

He's afraid but still takes time to wipe his lens.

MAN SPEAKS IN JAPANESE

Only now he flees.

And while he flees, he still keeps filming.

SPEAKING IN DISTANCE

EXPLOSION, RUMBLING

And only moments later, the end -

Mount Unzen explodes,

a gigantic pyroclastic flow comes rushing down.

No-one in its path will survive.

OPERATIC SINGING

The cameraman who fled reported that the Kraffts had been nearby.

We thought we should revisit his footage.

And here, wasn't there something?

Let's look at it again.

Now zoom in.

There is somebody.

There are some figures.

Could that be the Kraffts and Glicken?

The probability is high.

Does this here capture the very last moment of the Kraffts?

We do know, from the position their bodies were found,

they were the closest to the volcano.

There were survivors, but only those who were barely touched

by the edges of the flow.

JAPANESE RADIO CHATTER

The remains of Katia and Maurice were cremated in Japan,

and their ashes are buried here together

in the grave of Katia's family.

They're back now in Alsace, their home.

In their lives together, they walked along a precipice.

In their love, they became one.

This shot was made by Maurice walking with a camera,

the abyss too close.

Katia must have held him so he wouldn't fall.

OPERATIC SINGING

Because of this unity and this togetherness,

they were able to descend into the inferno

and wrestle an image from the very claws of the devil.

And that is why I wanted to make this film for them.

SINGING CONTINUES