corktown common
Thursday, August 1, 2024

fire of love

With the short film A Life on Mars

Expertly crafted from the personal archives of legendary volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, Sara Dosa’s award-winning documentary presents a jaw-dropping chronicle of the husband and wife team’s loving dedication to their work and to each other. With astonishing close-up footage and photographs of eruptions captured across several decades, Fire of Love brings to life the dangerous, awe-inspiring world of red-hot volcanoes, interpersonal challenges of working in remote regions, and the consuming passion of scientists driven to understand the inner workings of our planet. 

Toronto filmmaker Sebastian Ko’s similarly stunning short documentary A Life on Mars is constructed from images and audio from the Mars rover Curiosity, sourced from NASA’s open-data project. As hundreds of images captured during the rover’s ten year mission are assembled in sequence, the Martian landscape rumbles by and Curiosity takes on an almost-human character. Ko’s film presents Curiosity as an intrepid traveller and a scientist, exploring an alien world under the watchful eye of their unseen Earthly team of caretakers.  Despite the tolls of solitude, wear, and tear, they remain devoted to the continuous pursuit of discovery.