Volcano man

Villi Knudsen chases volcanoes. He can't remember a time when his life was not determined by where and when one of Iceland's permanently grumbling volcanoes was most likely to go off pop. Villi's father took him on countless missions across the pitiless interior of this land of fire and ice to capture footage of hot magma spewing through raw fissures. Today his old cine film equipment stands on stage in Villi's converted garage cinema, its leather casing lightly dusted in ash.

On screen the occasionally jumpy footage reveals a unique record of volcanic activity in Iceland since 1947. The schoolboy Villi manfully portering a tripod on horseback through glacial streams morphs into the young documentary journalist swooping over an exploding Mount Hekla in a helicopter. Unfortunately our intrepid film maker has developed the habit of switching off the helicopter engine to reduce the noise levels on his soundtrack. We never hear more than a muffled curse from the helicopter pilot.

A thickening, balding Villi continues to peer into craters plopping away like marmalade pans and take measurements in the sulphurous fumes of Grímsvötn Lake. He produces the footage that captured the world's imagination in November 1963 as the brand new island of Surtsey emerged hissing and steaming off the south coast of Iceland and ten years later he's off again to document the evacuation of neighbouring Heimaey Island, overwhelmed by a lava spill. If the earth rumbles and spits, he will find it and film it.

At the beginning and end of the show, the bespectacled Villi in carpet slippers and comfy knitted jumper shares a lifetime's work in a series of practised one liners delivered with the laconic timing of a stand-up comic. He warns us that today it's more dangerous to go into an Icelandic bank than to fly over the latest firework display at Eyja-fjalla-jökull or 'island-mountain-glacier' as it simply translates in Icelandic.

Emerging from the 1970's time capsule that is the Red Rock cinema, my head is full of hubbling, bubbling, molten images. Cone shaped mountains blow their crusts, muddy torrents of meltwater pick up and flick like marbles boulders the size of a house. The world is revealed as an angry, boiling porridge.

Villi thanks each of us personally for attending his show and as he ushers us out into the gentle summer night's light there's a deep sadness behind the rimless spectacles - a grizzled polar bear watching his world disappear.