La Soufrière + Lessons of Darkness

Herzog courting fire with documentaries about a ready-to-erupt volcano and about the blazing Kuwaiti oil fields following the first Gulf War.

La Soufrière

Warten auf eine Unausweichliche Katastrophe

  • Director

    Werner Herzog

  • West Germany 1977. 31min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    12A

  • English subtitles

Learning that Guadeloupe, about to be blown apart by a volcano eruption, has been evacuated save for a single farmer, Herzog flew to the island with cameramen Ed Lachman and Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, seeking out the last inhabitant to find out why he refused to leave. The result is a memento mori and a meditation on the relationship of ‘civilisation’ and nature.

+ Lessons of Darkness

Lektionen in Finsternis

  • Director

    Werner Herzog

  • Germany 1992. 54min

  • Digital

  • English subtitles

Shooting in and above the blazing Kuwaiti oil fields in the aftermath of the First Gulf War, Herzog contemplates humankind’s capacity for destruction and cruelty. Sweeping helicopter shots (to Wagner, Verdi, Mahler, Pärt et al) offer an epic, visually resplendent evocation of infernal apocalypse, but a more human, personal note is present in scenes featuring torture instruments, a mother and her silent child, and firefighters.

See La Soufrière + Lessons of Darkness with intro by writer Ian Hayden Smith on Tuesday 16 January.