Filmmaker Jean Epstein and his cameraman Paul Guichard made their way to the Etna on June 22, 1923. This was merely five days after the eruption started.

“Sicily! The night had a thousand eyes. All sorts of smells shrieked at once. An unfurled coil of wire brought our car, swathed in moonlight as if surrounded by mosquito netting, to a halt. It was hot. Impatient, the drivers broke off singing the most beautiful love song, striking the car with a monkey wrench and insulting Christ and his mother with a blind faith in their efficacy. In front of us: Etna, the great actor who bursts onto the stage two or three times each century, whose tragic extravagances I had arrived to film. An entire side of the mountain was a blazing spectacle. The conflagration reached up to the reddened corners of the sky. From a distance of twenty kilometers, the rumbling at times seemed to be a triumphal reception heard from afar, as if a thousand hands were applauding in an immense ovation.”

– Jean Epstein, Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (1926) (via)

 

Sisters, for one of the OPs' sister's birthday.

 

Expelled prostitute Maddalena returns to her home island Vulcano (Salina in disguise) and moves in with her sister Maria. A handsome fisherman becomes first Maria's, then Maddalena's catch.

 

A revenge film à la lettre, but not as you may think. Anna Magnani was cast as the lead for her lover Rossellini's Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950), and – after him having set eyes on Ingrid Bergman – was ditched in the latter's favour. While Rossellini fawned over the blonde, Magnani shot “her” film on a neighbouring volcanic island, blowing her former beau's efforts out of the water.

Someone at a theme park or national park*

“Telephones were still working, we are told, and the air-conditioning and refrigerators in many houses were still on.”

– narrator

The highest peak in the Parc national de la Guadeloupe is called La Grande Soufrière. The volcano had erupted before and was bound to do soon again. Hastily, the 76,000 islanders were evacuated with one farmer staying put. For Herzog reason to halt the editing of Herz aus Glas and make his way to the island.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.