Under the Volcano.
Mount Merapi – the name is Javanese for ‘fire mountain’ – is the most active stratovolcano in the world. It erupts every few years, with its pyroclastic flows killing 353 people and relocating over 350,000 in 2010. And yet a diverse range of people are drawn to live in its shadows: vulcanologists who debate whether it might mean extinction for humankind, sand miners who sustain the local economy at a cost, paramilitaries whose malign influence hovers over the area, and a shaman with a more mystical interest in the spirit of the mountain. Prominent artist Riar Rizaldi drew all these people together to develop this wholly innovative project. His work has been widely compared to that of AFF favourite Apichatpong Weerasethakul for its spirit of experimentation that blurs the distinction between fiction and documentary; a hybrid of factual and fictional, future and past, material and incorporeal, scientific and magical.
This film is co-presented in partnership with the Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival