3D AT CHAUVET

It has been a week since I saw Werner Herzog´s new film, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" and it is still fresh in my mind. This is the first 3D film that makes wearing those silly glasses worth your while. (I must say that as much as they work hard to make them look like Ray Ban Wayfarers they will always look ridiculous).

This film takes you inside the Chauvet cave, in France. A tremendous privilege in itself since only a small team of scientists and art historians have been allowed inside the cave. The paintings found inside this complex cave system are the oldest to be known to man kind, about 30,000 years old.

This film is not for everyone, most of Werner Herzog´s films aren´t, they have a tendency to explore extreme cases of human behavior that can be quite entertaining. In this case he is the one going to extremes to bring these images to us, since he was not allowed more than 2 crew members, very limited camera equipment, only 4 hours of filming per day during a 2 week period and could not wonder of a 70cm platform which is the only way to travel through the cave without harming this incredibly fragile time capsule.

It is easy to just look at these beautiful drawings all day long but not enough to fill up an 86min. film, therefore he talks to some of the people involved in the study of this cave. It is so nice to see that there are still people in these professions that they get to study such a magnificent space, and to top it off they get paid to do so, it makes them as much of a rarity as their subject matter.