Female Film Critics 24/375
Fire of Love captures volcanoes’ majesty and terror. In Fire of Love, director Sara Dosa has crafted an unusual documentary on the majesty, power, and danger of volcanoes, for Dosa did not shoot the extraordinary footage presented here. However, she has expertly chosen from and edited hundreds of hours of her subjects’ 16mm films and thousands of their photographs. They are volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
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Part romance, part breathtaking nature film, and wholly engrossing, Fire of Love tells the story of Katia and Maurice Krafft, two of the world’s foremost volcanologists. Their dedication to their calling — and each other — is captured deftly by director Sara Dosa, who mines extraordinary historic footage and pairs it with narration by Miranda July to produce a film that’s both quirky and a loving homage to two very passionate people.
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With Fire of Love, director Sara Dosa pays tribute to the pioneering work of Alsatian vulcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married couple—scientists who got as close as possible to upwards of 200 active volcanoes, photographing and filming eruptions, taking samples and readings of lava and gases, and creating books and movies to pay the bills and spread information to lay audiences and scientists alike. Much of the film is composed of the footage they shot themselves. The Kraffts chose their isolated, dangerous life and lived most fully on the lips of the volcanoes that finally gave them the kiss of death.
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Songs call love a burning thing, and for French scientists and spouses Katia and Maurice Krafft, that love burned white-hot over decades of exploring volcanoes. They trekked across cooling masses of lava, camped next to eruptions, and inched as close to the heat as possible. The two died on June 3, 1991, during the eruption of Japan’s Mount Unzen, caught in a huge, fast-moving cloud of volcanic matter and gases called a pyroclastic flow. The eruption killed 43 people to whom director Sara Dosa dedicated this film. The last known shot of the Kraffts shows them in red and yellow rain slickers, tiny against the mountain’s grandeur.
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