Cinema as volcano: thinking cinema through the volcano with Malena Szlam, Werner Herzog and Jean Epstein

In “Cinema Seen from Etna”, Jean Epstein makes an enigmatic comparison between cinema and the volcano. In witnessing the exploding Etna, Epstein proclaims that he saw cinema itself. This essay examines this connection between cinema and the volcano through an exploration of Werner Herzog’s documentary Into the Inferno (2016) and Malena Szlam’s geological films ALTIPLANO (2018) and MERAPI (2021). Drawing on literature in environmental humanities – especially those on the lithic and the elemental – I think the cinema through the volcano to arrive at the proposition that cinema, at least a certain kind of ‘volcanic cinema’, is a means of approaching something we might call ‘volcanic thinking’. This is a thinking alongside the elements, one that bears particular affinity with the sometimes explosive churning of rock and fire, a thinking that is necessary and critical for our volatile age.