Werner Herzog
Germany | 1977 | 31 min
Language : German
Subtitles : English, French
In 1976, the announcement that Guadeloupe’s main volcano, La Grande Soufrière, was about to erupt emptied Basse-Terre of its inhabitants. Werner Herzog heads there with his team, his two operators, while the danger is at its climax. He discovers a ghost city and the approach of the crater is impossible. But Herzog has come with the aim to meet a man who is apparently still there. He meets three farmers. Errant souls on the threshold of the apocalypse, they seem serene nonetheless and show a fatalism that demonstrates unwavering wisdom. Herzog’s taste for extreme situations and characters is once again at the centre of this film. And when ultimately the catastrophe does not take place, he then focuses on the discussion with these men, black farmers abandoned on the French territory, continuing his anthropological search into the suffering of humans in their environment. In 2016, he returns to film active volcanoes, this time closer up, in the Netflix production Into the Inferno.
Madeline Robert
