Vanuatu, le peuple du feu
Bénédicte Banet, Christine Le Hesran
1998 - 52 min - Couleur - France

"... All over the world, the people who live at the foot of a volcano associate it with a spirit. I have faith in science and at the same time I respect the spirit of the volcano..."
The man who says this grew up in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Douglas Charley, who is today a geological technician at Orstom, watches over the active volcanoes out there in the Pacific.
From island to island, he wins the confidence of the inhabitants, explains the measures that he is taking, gives information about the state of the crater.
The legends and beliefs that the village chiefs recount feed science, since they are in a way the only archives available about the presumed life of volcanoes. From a lake of molten lava to a superb ballet of bubbles escaping from an underwater volcano, from a crumpled landscape in ochre to another in luxuriant green, this documentary manages to find a balance between the discovery of a people and the more material discovery of the geological environment.