Lava (2014 film)

Lava
Directed by	James Ford Murphy
Produced by	Andrea Warren
Screenplay by	James Ford Murphy
Starring	Kuana Torres Kahele Napua Greig
Production company	Pixar Animation Studios Walt Disney Pictures
Distributed by	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release date	June 14, 2014 (2014-06-14) (Hiroshima International Animation Festival) June 19, 2015 (2015-06-19) (with Inside Out)
Running time	7 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Lava is a 2014 American computer-animated musical short film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren, it premiered at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on June 14, 2014, and was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Inside Out on June 19, 2015.

The short is a musical love story that takes place over millions of years. It is set to a song written by Murphy, and was inspired by the "isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes."

In an interview with KHON, Murphy explained that his interest in Hawaii began 25 years prior while honeymooning on the big island. Years later, he heard Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", which touched him. "I put together this fascination and love and this experience I had with my wife in Hawaii, with this feeling I had for this song and thought, wow, if I could blend those two things, it would be really—a film I would love to see." The idea began to coalesce while attending the wedding of his sister, who married at the age of 43. "As my sister stood up on the altar, I thought about how happy she was and how long she’d waited for her very special day. There, at my sister’s wedding, I remembered Loihi and I had an epiphany… What if my sister was a volcano? And what if volcanoes spend their entire lives searching for love, like humans do?"

On a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, a lonely volcano named Uku watches the wildlife creatures frolic with their mates and hopes to find one of his own. He sings a song to the ocean each day for thousands of years, gradually venting his lava and sinking into the water, but does not realize that an undersea volcano named Lele has heard him every day and has fallen in love with him. She emerges on the day that Uku becomes extinct, but her face is turned away and she cannot see him. Uku sinks fully into the ocean, heartbroken, but revives when he hears Lele singing his song to him. His fires re-ignited, he erupts back to the surface, this time right next to Lele, and the two form a single island where they are happy together.