Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Cinema's great raconteur, Werner Herzog, may well have adopted the last lines of Plato's Allegory of the Cave - "The idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort" - as his filmmaking credo for this extraordinary 3-D documentation of some of the earliest-known representations by humankind:  the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave art. Created more than thirty thousand years ago (making them roughly twice the age of the Lascaux cave art) and discovered in 1994, access to the paintings has been strictly limited to a handful of researchers for fear that even human breath will cause them to deteriorate. Herzog, in his inimitable way, secured himself an entrée, took along a 3-D camera, and, using lights that emit no heat, recorded these awe-inspiring images for posterity. "What constitutes humanness?" he asks the archaeologists and paleontologists along the way - his line of inquisition reinforcing the spiritual power of the timeless art he documents.

Australian Premiere

3-D glasses are available at the cinema door for $1.00 each (cash only).