Oscar-nominated Danish documentary maker Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Flee) spoke to Sara Dosa about her hotly tipped feature doc Fire of Love which tells the story of the doomed volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
Before asking Dosa how the documentary came into being, he summarized it from his perspective. “I really feel this is the kind of film that the world needs right now, because it’s a story of love and it’s also a story of connectivity both between human beings, but also between humans and nature and the very earth that we walk every day.”
Dosa explained how she first came across the story of the Kraffts when she was researching her previous film The Seer and The Unseen (2019), about a female Icelandic shaman who communicates with the spirits of nature. “We like to think of that film as a magically real documentary, and it was very important to us to open the film with kind of gorgeous, somewhat surreal imagery of volcanic activity in Iceland,” she explained. “And we were searching for archival images, ideally shot in the seventies or eighties of erupting volcanoes in Iceland. And since not very many people had done that kind of work we very quickly came across Katja and Maurice Krafft.”
“Once we learned, though, that they were a couple in love with each other and just so passionate about the earth as well…their images were beautiful, but it was their character, their personalities their philosophies which were so embodied in their life story. That’s what made us think that there could be an interesting film there,” Dosa continues.
“We actually put that idea aside though, because after we finished The Seer and The Unseen we were [supposed] to be making a film in Siberia about these mysterious methane explosions. We were all set to go on a scout in April 2020. But that’s, of course, when COVID hit,” Dosa stresses.
“That project ended up collapsing. And during the early days of sheltering in place, we thought if we could work on an archival film that would be a way to continue to make work which is, you know, not just a job. It’s for me, so akin to religion. My way of holding onto the planet is making films. And we remembered the story of Katja and Maurice Krafft and decided to really embrace that and got the proverbial ball rolling once again.”
Click here to see the whole conversation between Jonas Poher Rasmussen and Sara Dosa.
