The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft

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.