The documentary film An Inhabited Volcano offers a personal look at the 2021 La Palma volcano eruption through WhatsApp messages.
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David Pantaleón and Jose Victor Fuentes’s film An Inhabited Volcano documents the 2021 volcano eruption from La Palma, Canary Islands. The filmmakers use WhatsApp Voice messages as a kind of Greek Chorus to accompany images of the natural disaster. The voices begin in awe of this incredible event with a touch of fear. The messages put us right in the shoes of the people experiencing the natural disaster. It’s as if they’re reacting to the images we’re seeing. Pantaleón and Fuentes never identify the speakers or their backstories. This lets them stand in for anyone in the town experiencing this in real time.
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While Fire of Love (2022) was about how volcanoes inspire awe. An Inhabited Volcano shows another side. What happens when the volcano erupting is next door? What is it like to live with just an incredible amount of ash landing in your backyard? In one scene, a drone shot from above follows a couple sweeping away the ash from their deck. The sheer amount of it is shocking.
Tourists flock to the volcano in N95s — not as protection from COVID but from the toxic air. Houses become completely covered in black ash. The toll on the town mounts as the eruption continues for days, weeks, and months. The WhatsApp recordings document the growing fatigue and concern for when it will end and at what human cost. We watch lava destroy homes and people in need of new shelter. It’s not until the film’s final moments that we get a full sense of the scale of what’s going on. In a shot from above, we see how incredibly long the lava river is from the volcano. It hits us that the eruption would have upended many, many lives.
An Inhabited Volcano screened in the Burning Lights Competition. It is still seeking North American/UK distribution.
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