2011-09-29

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

When you look around you at all the creative and artistic pieces you own, whether it is paintings on the wall or jewellery such as designer silver rings, it is easy to think that real art is a relatively modern phenomenon. However artistic expression was one of the first things our early human ancestors did, almost as if it was a way to define themselves as non-animals. In fact, I attended one lecture on the history of art that was titled ‘One Hundred Thousand Years of Modern Art.'

an extraordinary place and an extraordinary film

One of the most extraordinary centres for early prehistoric art is the Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche region of France. Discovered only in 1994 by a group of cavers who were convinced that the limestone cliffs of the regions contained unknown cave systems, they were pleased enough to have their theory proven right when they finally stumbled into this large cave. They couldn’t believe their eyes when they realised their new discovery also contained a huge number of cave paintings.

The story of the cave and of the paintings is told in a quite amazing film that is worth seeing again and again. ‘The Cave of Forgotten Dreams'by veteran German director Werner Herzog was filmed in just the few days of a year when scientists and archaeologists are allowed into the cave, and is simply a cinematographic record of the paintings.

The camera slowly pans around the cave walls, lingering on a group of prehistoric horses, or the haunch of a mammoth, or the outlines of human hands. The cave is stuffed with amazing art, including a partial sculpture of a fat human woman, a ‘Venus'figurine. For the most part, our human ancestors left wall paintings, including some very rare pictures of hyenas, owls, and a rhinoceros.

What film does better than any other medium, is show how this cave might have appeared to people back the Stone Age. The camera’s lighting flickers across the stone, highlighting the way that shifting light – such as the torches the painters themselves would have used – makes the images seem to move and come to life. The camera also shows how bumps or cracks in the stone walls were used to make the pictures seem almost three dimensional, so that a lump becomes a belly and a crack is used to outline legs.

It is an extraordinary place, and it is an extraordinary film that has recorded it.

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