Caves

Tonight I went to see the UK premier of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which was followed by a Q and A with the director Werner Herzog.I couldn't get tickets for the main showing at Brixton so I went to Clapham where the Q and A was beamed by satellite to that cinema and 42 others in the UK. What an interesting man. I love his enthusiasm and his way of filming the wonders that he sees. The cave in the film is Chauvet Cave in France, which was discovered by three people in 1994. The cave had been completely cut off by a landslide many thousands of years ago, perfectly preserving the cave paintings and the bones of cave bears within. The paintings are so stunningly fresh and professional that at first they were thought to be hoaxes, but the oldest of them is 32,000 years old. There are others painted 5,000 years later so the cave was in use for a long time. A full gallery of pictures can be seen here. The lions and the horses in particular left me speechless.

I should say, too, that the film is in 3D and the artists who worked in the cave have used the shapes of the cave walls to add shape and movement to the animals.

After the film, Fred and I went for falafel at a Moroccan restaurant opposite the cinema. Yum!