The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022) Movie Script
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 is something so awe-inspiring in it,
so never seen before that
attracted me as a filmmaker.
They lost their lives together,
capturing the might of volcanoes.
This is their legacy.
The lives and 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.
This here's Katia Krafft
at a volcano in Iceland.
And this is her husband, Maurice.
Alsace, Eastern France,
both were born in villages,
not far apart 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 their 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 four kilometers
distant from the crater.
Its delineation in 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.
The point where...
The smoke is?
Here they make a first assessment
of the situation.
Small so-called pyroclastic
flows have occurred recently.
- Over five kilometer.
- Good.
Over there, small one
there, one kilometer.
Oh.
The newspapers have reported
about the pyroclastic flows,
highly dangerous clouds of super
heated particles and gases.
Maurice is setting up his camera.
He still shoots 16 millimeter celluloid.
The local TV crew now captures Katia
who is setting up the
tripod for her photo camera.
What?
Maurice has problems
with the battery of his zoom.
The mountain is quiet.
Nothing 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.
And if we stay on the top of this hill,
it's possible about.
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 okay.
And here, suddenly a
small pyroclastic flow
that will stop in the distance.
And then, because 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.
After that you can meet your planned,
pyroclastic flow.
That was 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 flow
I have seen in my life.
Well, yesterday's pyroclastic
flow was very, very big one.
And that is the biggest one.
The cloud cover the full of mountain.
Oh yes. Uh-huh.
Yeah, I would like to see
this kind of thing, bigger.
Yes, sure.
But probably at all part
of the dome collapsed at this moment.
So maybe it will need
some, some hours or days
to make a new domes that may collapse
and 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 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 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.
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.
And 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 anymore.
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 Saint Augustine in Alaska.
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 400 miles an hour.
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's 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 home
movies 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 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
and the Kraffts abandoned
their 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
his styled himself after
the world-renowned underwater
film maker Jacques Cousteau,
wearing his trademark red woolen cap
and smoking a pipe.
The Kraffts apparently found it cool
to use pathetic looking inflatable seats.
Katia's role on camera
was still diminished.
Frequently, she would be used for a scale.
Here in Yosemite, she's hit
by some drops of hot water.
For the camera, they repeated
several times all fake.
Increasingly they became filmmakers.
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 a role of photographer.
Her pictures were published in magazines
and the 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 image has become grandiose.
A great filmmaker 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.
When looking at Maurice
right at the eruption
it seems that this is more
than just a volcanic event.
A fire within has taken 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.
A series of earthquakes
and steam venting episodes
beginning in March signaled 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 670 miles per hour.
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.
Mid-'80s, Hawaii.
The Kraffts increasingly are
attracted to the magnificence
and mystery of the inner
earth flowing to the surface.
They are no longer volcanologists,
they're artists who
carry us, the spectators,
away in the 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.
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 9:09 p.m., on November 13th, 1985,
an eruption occurred.
It was only 3% of what was
ejected from Mount St. Helens,
but the glowing lava and 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.
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
what came down in Colombia.
Water eroded soil and dislodged
rocks came sweeping down.
However, the lahar in
Colombia was 100 feet deep.
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 kilometer,
sweeping through the town.
Out of 29,000 inhabitants,
over 20,000 of them perished.
Only a few buildings on higher
ground remained standing.
This was a fourth deadliest
disaster in recorded history.
What we see here used to
be the center 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've taken most of the inhabitants
just 200 meters to reach higher ground.
We have to imagine the water rose higher
than the bulldozers.
The level of the mudflow
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 required 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 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.
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.
The shift did not happen overnight
as can be seen in footage
the Kraffts filmed
in Indonesia a year before
the tragedy of Armero.
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 behavior?
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 the Spaghetti Western turned nightmare.
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.
Hawaii, the Kraffts went there repeatedly.
This is where there's
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.
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.
This is what the Mexicans would call
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.
Back in Japan, Mount
Unzen, June 2nd, 1991.
The situation is unchanged.
No eruption, no big pyroclastic flow.
No choice.
The Kraffts and Harry Glicken
are holding their position,
musing about the small
events at the volcano.
Maybe the event they talk about,
you know, when they say 20
pyroclastic flows per day,
maybe they, because they says
it because of the seismicity.
So maybe they even count the
small ones, very small ones.
Yeah, maybe they don't really see them.
They're see the clouds up there.
Yeah, they're 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 10 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 advisor,
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 the 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.
And looking into their archive,
we discover images, not only of volcanoes
but landscapes that nobody
has ever filmed like them.
Some of it has a quality of dreams,
like in the biblical apocalypse,
stones are raining from the sky.
And rocks are giving up
their assigned nature
just to solidly sit there.
They tumble.
And plants and creatures
and our whole planet seem to
be somewhere in outer space.
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.
They order him to evacuate at once.
He's afraid, but still takes
the time to wipe his lens.
Only now he flees.
And while he flees,
he still keeps filming.
And only moments later the end.
Mount Unzen explodes,
a gigantic pyroclastic
flow comes rushing down.
No one in its path will survive.
The cameraman who fled reported
that the Kraffts had been nearby.
He 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.
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.
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.
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 is something so awe-inspiring in it,
so never seen before that
attracted me as a filmmaker.
They lost their lives together,
capturing the might of volcanoes.
This is their legacy.
The lives and 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.
This here's Katia Krafft
at a volcano in Iceland.
And this is her husband, Maurice.
Alsace, Eastern France,
both were born in villages,
not far apart 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 their 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 four kilometers
distant from the crater.
Its delineation in 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.
The point where...
The smoke is?
Here they make a first assessment
of the situation.
Small so-called pyroclastic
flows have occurred recently.
- Over five kilometer.
- Good.
Over there, small one
there, one kilometer.
Oh.
The newspapers have reported
about the pyroclastic flows,
highly dangerous clouds of super
heated particles and gases.
Maurice is setting up his camera.
He still shoots 16 millimeter celluloid.
The local TV crew now captures Katia
who is setting up the
tripod for her photo camera.
What?
Maurice has problems
with the battery of his zoom.
The mountain is quiet.
Nothing 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.
And if we stay on the top of this hill,
it's possible about.
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 okay.
And here, suddenly a
small pyroclastic flow
that will stop in the distance.
And then, because 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.
After that you can meet your planned,
pyroclastic flow.
That was 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 flow
I have seen in my life.
Well, yesterday's pyroclastic
flow was very, very big one.
And that is the biggest one.
The cloud cover the full of mountain.
Oh yes. Uh-huh.
Yeah, I would like to see
this kind of thing, bigger.
Yes, sure.
But probably at all part
of the dome collapsed at this moment.
So maybe it will need
some, some hours or days
to make a new domes that may collapse
and 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 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 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.
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.
And 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 anymore.
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 Saint Augustine in Alaska.
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 400 miles an hour.
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's 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 home
movies 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 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
and the Kraffts abandoned
their 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
his styled himself after
the world-renowned underwater
film maker Jacques Cousteau,
wearing his trademark red woolen cap
and smoking a pipe.
The Kraffts apparently found it cool
to use pathetic looking inflatable seats.
Katia's role on camera
was still diminished.
Frequently, she would be used for a scale.
Here in Yosemite, she's hit
by some drops of hot water.
For the camera, they repeated
several times all fake.
Increasingly they became filmmakers.
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 a role of photographer.
Her pictures were published in magazines
and the 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 image has become grandiose.
A great filmmaker 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.
When looking at Maurice
right at the eruption
it seems that this is more
than just a volcanic event.
A fire within has taken 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.
A series of earthquakes
and steam venting episodes
beginning in March signaled 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 670 miles per hour.
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.
Mid-'80s, Hawaii.
The Kraffts increasingly are
attracted to the magnificence
and mystery of the inner
earth flowing to the surface.
They are no longer volcanologists,
they're artists who
carry us, the spectators,
away in the 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.
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 9:09 p.m., on November 13th, 1985,
an eruption occurred.
It was only 3% of what was
ejected from Mount St. Helens,
but the glowing lava and 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.
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
what came down in Colombia.
Water eroded soil and dislodged
rocks came sweeping down.
However, the lahar in
Colombia was 100 feet deep.
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 kilometer,
sweeping through the town.
Out of 29,000 inhabitants,
over 20,000 of them perished.
Only a few buildings on higher
ground remained standing.
This was a fourth deadliest
disaster in recorded history.
What we see here used to
be the center 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've taken most of the inhabitants
just 200 meters to reach higher ground.
We have to imagine the water rose higher
than the bulldozers.
The level of the mudflow
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 required 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 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.
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.
The shift did not happen overnight
as can be seen in footage
the Kraffts filmed
in Indonesia a year before
the tragedy of Armero.
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 behavior?
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 the Spaghetti Western turned nightmare.
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.
Hawaii, the Kraffts went there repeatedly.
This is where there's
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.
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.
This is what the Mexicans would call
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.
Back in Japan, Mount
Unzen, June 2nd, 1991.
The situation is unchanged.
No eruption, no big pyroclastic flow.
No choice.
The Kraffts and Harry Glicken
are holding their position,
musing about the small
events at the volcano.
Maybe the event they talk about,
you know, when they say 20
pyroclastic flows per day,
maybe they, because they says
it because of the seismicity.
So maybe they even count the
small ones, very small ones.
Yeah, maybe they don't really see them.
They're see the clouds up there.
Yeah, they're 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 10 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 advisor,
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 the 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.
And looking into their archive,
we discover images, not only of volcanoes
but landscapes that nobody
has ever filmed like them.
Some of it has a quality of dreams,
like in the biblical apocalypse,
stones are raining from the sky.
And rocks are giving up
their assigned nature
just to solidly sit there.
They tumble.
And plants and creatures
and our whole planet seem to
be somewhere in outer space.
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.
They order him to evacuate at once.
He's afraid, but still takes
the time to wipe his lens.
Only now he flees.
And while he flees,
he still keeps filming.
And only moments later the end.
Mount Unzen explodes,
a gigantic pyroclastic
flow comes rushing down.
No one in its path will survive.
The cameraman who fled reported
that the Kraffts had been nearby.
He 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.
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.
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.