Into The Inferno !EXCLUSIVE!
Werner Herzog, the singularly solemn-voiced German auteur who has been a major force in world cinema for almost 50 years, has forged his legend by laughing at death. A prophet of darkness and a showman who would bungee jump into hell so long as he could come back with the footage to prove it, Herzog has survived everything from the lifeless tundras of Antarctica to the impassably dark jungles of Peru; from the burning oil fields of post-war Kuwait to the raging anger of his best fiend, Klaus Kinski.
Into the Inferno
Werner Herzog does it again with the documentary genre. Already a film with intense footage capturing the destructive beauty of volcanoes should be good, but Herzog just keeps pushing and pushing to get stories out of these sites. The documentary captures some of the most interesting people and cultures to come out of humanity's struggle with volcanoes, how the awe and fear that was created when man first saw a volcanic eruption has manifested into the 21st century. Every single topic of the documentary is a right hook you weren't expecting, especially when Herzog is able to get up close and personal in North Korea. It is an endlessly fascinating tale of humanity's history with one of the most destructive natural phenomena and another golden standard that proves why Herzog is one of the best documentarians of all-time.
I coughed and spluttered as I dived inside the lift alongside the attendant, casting one last look at the fiery hell as the doors closed and we descended once again to an uncertain fate.I was still choking on the excess smoke when we reached level 7 and were faced with yet another fiery and barely survivable environment. We walked out under a red sky and into a landscape scarred by jagged rocks. The attendant pointed me towards a distant river which flowed through the dead land and indicated that we should walk towards it.
Once again, he used his mysterious powers, clicking his fingers to magically summon an arched bridge into existence, allowing us to cross the river of boiling blood. I was cautious as we walked the bridge, looking down at the crimson tide below and fearing what would become of me if I fell. But we got to the far bank in one piece and proceeded across the hot rocks.
I turned around to look upon my guide, noting the fear in his bulging eyes. A moment later and the ground beneath our feet began to shake, throwing both of us off our feet. The powerful earthquake only increased in intensity, as the rocky surface cracked open, exposing us to the dark void below. I screamed in terror and looked to my guide for help, but I saw him falling into the gap like a helpless ragdoll.
As we walked I saw other figures around us, all semi-naked and struggling to differing degrees. Some were still standing, although I could tell their bare feet were burning with every step. Others had given up altogether, falling face down into the sand. But there was no respite for the damned as they continued to scream in agony, their flesh burning fiercely and their minds driven to madness.
I was horrified to witness the entity masquerading as Sarah physically grow as it approached, transforming from a little girl into a monster, easily 12 foot tall. Her eyes were pure black, like those of a shark, and her jaw opened wide, revealing a gaping dark hole. And when she spoke, her voice was inhuman and terrifying.
In a matter of seconds, the desert around us transformed into a whirlpool of red sand, sucking up everything and pulling us down. I screamed in terror as I fell, the attendant tumbling alongside me, our helpless bodies swallowed up by the dark abyss.
These articles are based in part upon talks presented at the VII Short Course on Fire Behaviour at Coimbra, Portugal (held in conjunction with the VII International Conference on Forest Fire Research, November 2014), the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering Director's Colloquium and the ANU Fire in the Environment summer course. I would like to thank Professors Albert Simeoni and Domingos Viegas, Professor Stephen Buckman and Dr. James Sullivan, and Associate Professor Geoff Cary, respectively, for inviting me to present at those events. I would also like to thank Dr. Marty Alexander for the opportunity to turn the talks into an article (or series of articles) and Dr. Matt Plucinski, Dr. Albert Simeoni, Dr. Sadandandan Nambiar and Dr. Miguel Cruz for providing constructive comments on early drafts.
No nation is as ravaged by fires as Australia. It is the every-present force that shapes our land and people. Every summer threatens to explode into an inferno, yet despite repeated disasters, this enemy remains largely unknown to us. Why is it so deadly, and how can we fight it?
As the clock strikes 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 16, a collective sigh of relief is breathed by the Humanities II students involved in the annual Inferno themed project. After two weeks of tirelessly transforming two empty classrooms into separate immersive walk-throughs of hell for each of the three Humanities II class periods, the sophomores responsible for the project are finally able to put down their paintbrushes and packing tape as the due date arrives.
Fire is a gift given to man by Prometheus, but somehow this emblazoned award turns into a spectacularly horrific force when it loses restraint and initiates forest fires. Many of these appallingly destructive catastrophes have been recorded by wildfire photographer Stuart Palley.
The concept of a Fight Cave expansion and "Jad 2" was first teased at RuneFest 2015, which was slated for a summer 2016 release. Here, upon defeating TzTok-Jad, players could choose to claim their fire cape or sacrifice it, the latter in which would cause the floor to collapse and fight subsequent waves of more powerful monsters, all culminating into fighting "Jad 2".
For nearly a decade, Palley has been on the frontline of fire. He has witnessed homeowners on the worst day of their lives. He's seen puddles of aluminum where cars were once parked. He's watched as 150-foot walls of flame cascaded down mountainsides and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. And he's captured, time and again, the tireless commitment of firefighters as they work to save lives and homes, in terrain where fire always seems to have the upper hand.
In this memoir, Palley recalls how he went from learning to be safe on the fireline to a fire-savvy documentarian of wildfire and climate change. He covers some of California's largest, most destructive, and deadliest fires between 2012 and 2020, lugging his gear from the Wine Country Fire Siege to the Thomas Fire and ultimately to the Woolsey Fire in Malibu. And he shows how, in a relatively short span of time, fire season in California has grown into a perpetual crisis, requiring billions of dollars and thousands of firefighters each year.
"From his front-row seat, Palley pens a compelling, personal narrative of what it's like to watch the world burn. His journey into realizing that climate change is a current disaster, not a future one, is ultimately a destination we're all going to have to reach. Let Palley be your guide to understanding the new normal."
"Stuart is a much needed and powerful voice in the face of the climate emergency. Like his photos, his writing viscerally captures the unique and haunting experience each fire has on ecosystems, survivors, and the communities impacted. Into the Inferno captures the frontlines of each megafire and translates each experience into urgency, loss, and a sobering foreshadowing of our future in an age of fire."
"Very few photographers understand the nuances of fire like Stuart Palley. With Into the Inferno, Palley takes the reader on his journey to the heart of some of the most historic and destructive fires in the United States, and provides compelling insight into the complexities of photographing wildfires while trying to stay safe, and ultimately making one of the most poignant and important photographic records of the effects of climate change to date. This book is essential reading for anyone looking for insight into the treacherous journey of those covering and fighting fires."
In his latest documentary, the German filmmaker proclaims exactly that as he stands at the edge of an open-faced volcano. He peers into the cauldron of Earth's roiling innards. In his sui generis narration, he says, "It is a fire that wants to burst forth.... It could care less what we are doing up here."
Herzog: Clive Oppenheimer is somebody who does it professionally. Even though it's a scientific point of view, it is certainly always overshadowed by the sense of awe. Awe is what I feel looking into a boiling mass of lava.
[Clive] is too modest to take credit. I proclaim that you're sitting with a man who has saved human lives on a huge scale. You're not going to run into anyone within the next decade who has saved so many.
Herzog: Nobody can roam around North Korea with a camera as I would do in Canada, for example. We had to accept it. You have to be prudent, and you have to know what you are getting into.
When it comes to documentaries, my advice would be to take a hard look at what documentaries are doing nowadays. In their majority, much of what you see is an extension of journalism. I personally try to divorce my documentaries from journalism. When you look into the inferno, it's far remote from journalism. There's poetry in it. There's curiosity. 041b061a72