Volcanic Fury - White Island

This 1952 film ventures off the Bay of Plenty coast to New Zealand’s most active volcano: White Island. The National Film Unit production joins a team of DSIR scientists, supposedly the first humans in more than a decade to to view this “fantastic laboratory of nature”. They camp in the ruins of a sulphur mill, where the acidic fumes have disintegrated factory engines. Steam in fumeroles destroys thermometers — “mapping the land brings the party to many a scene like this: a scene from The Inferno”. Elsewhere, gannets nest, defying the inhospitable environment. 

Mapping the land brings the party to many a scene like this: a scene from The Inferno. Across Crater Bay, sulphur streams pour into the sea.

– From the narration

Key Cast & Crew

Russell Reid

Editor, Writer

Ivo Tisch

Camera

Briton Chadwick

Narrator