1. What is the title of the film, what (brief summary) is it about (subject, topic)?
Answer: The film is called “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” Made in 2010, it describes the fabulous Paleolithic rock art in France’s Chavet Cave, including its location, description, and possible scientific and cultural significance.
2. Why did you choose this documentary to view? What did you expect to learn or experience from this film?
Answer: I chose this film because of its title. I have always been fascinated with dreams and dreaming, and I thought I might learn more about dreams we have forgotten from our history and might be important to us as we look at them now.
3. What was the central point of this film? That is, what was the overall focus, goal or mission of the filmmaker? Think of it like an essay: What was the thesis statement?
Answer: The central point of this film was to communicate the importance of the Paleolithic rock art from the Chavet Cave to the general public. The cave is closed to tourists, so as not to degrade the atmosphere and the paintings with outside contaminants, and filming the art at this location is the only means to show people what has been found and to describe why it is of such importance.
4. How did the filmmaker support that central point? Topics? Facts? Stats? Interviews? Comparisons? Describe them; don""?t just list them.
Answer: The filmmaker, Werner Herzog, was limited in the amount of time he was allowed to film in the cave, as well as in the amount of equipment he could use to document the paintings and other artifacts. That meant he had to be creative about how he made his point and how he supported his overall thesis. Most of his support came from interviews with a variety of scientists – paleontologists, archaeologists, historians, etc. They described how the original rock art had been precisely dated from charcoal deposits and calcite rock layering to about 32,000 years ago; how some images were layered on top of each other over time, meaning that the action of drawing was of importance to many different groups of people; how this cave was similar to many other caves in the region; and how the Paleolithic people portrayed the animals of the period in which they lived. This included not only which animals were present in the drawings but also in how they conveyed their movement (i.e. drawing multiple legs in different positions, opening their mouths to breathe, etc.) and actions.
They also explained that they found numerous animal skeletons in addition to the animals’ pictures, such as bison, lions, ibexes, and bears, and that some of these were carefully placed on certain rock formations. However, there were no human remains, and they found drawn only one partial human figure, that of a woman who had the head of a bison (a minotaur of myth). This led them to deduce that the cave was used for artistic and ceremonial purposes, and that it was not a living area for the people of that time. Despite the vast array of pictures, however, no one is exactly sure why people drew them or what they signified in terms of cultural expression.
Herzog also talked with scientists who worked at different archaeological locations to see how similar or different the artifacts were from each other, and he found that other sites also yielded drawn art, animal remains, and artifacts (such as ivory flutes and sculpted figurines, items not present at Chavet) that supported the theory that they were made by similar cultures between 30,000-40,000 years ago. Some other sites also yielded human remains, meaning that human ancestors did live in caves at certain points in their history, although not at Chavet.
5. How did this film compare to your expectations? What, if anything, did you learn from it, intellectually or emotionally? How did it impact you? That is, did it inspire you or change your perspective in any way?
Answer: As I mentioned before, I expected that this film would be about dreams, so in that sense, it did not meet my expectations. However, I learned a lot from it, such as that about 30,000 years ago, our ancestors drew paintings of animals in caves, some from interesting perspectives (such as with twice as many legs as normal, to simulate movement), and in that way they preserved what they were thinking and feeling at the time. This is a very powerful thing because we can learn about their society and culture even after all these years; we can see how they may have affected our thinking and our own culture; and we can imagine that they might have be thinking ahead to people who would come after them, preserving their images for those people to see.
6. Describe at least five examples in the film in which the filmmaker effectively used some of the techniques listed below by making the scene easier to follow or understand, drive home a point, enhance the drama/emotion/impact, keep your attention:
"?? Used archival footage effectively
"?? Used cutaway shots to exemplify the speaker""?s or narrator""?s point
"?? Used sound, either natural or inserted, to enhance the scene
"?? Used text or graphics
"?? Used lighting, camera angles, camera movement (such as pan, tilt, zoom, dolly) or editing techniques (such as cut, fade, dissolve, crosscutting, flashback, eye-line match, slow motion, fast motion, double exposure, black and white, grainy)
Answer:
1. The opening shot drew the audience into the film by tracking the camera forward through a vineyard and then over the trees, zooming in to the hidden location of Chavet Cave. We were almost pulled along with the camera’s motion.
2. At one point the director called for complete silence, so that we could “hear” the sound of the cave, as if we were living in it.
3. The filmmaker displayed a computer image mapping the spatial points inside the cave to show the complete size and shape of the area. It gave the viewer a sense of the cave’s complexity and richness of detail.
4. When describing the “living, breathing” animals drawn on the cave’s walls, the filmmaker added the sound of a heartbeat to the music, as if we were indeed watching living, breathing things.
5. The single depiction of a person, the pelvic area and legs of a woman on a rock outcropping, showed only a portion of what had been drawn; the filmmakers were not permitted to walk over to the rock and examine it, for fear they would disturb the ground underneath. The director had a clever idea, though, and he extended a camera on a stick to get a glance around the outcropping. It was only then that we saw the woman had the head of a bison and was drawn in great, and precise, detail.
6. When the narrator mentioned that the cave had been sealed thousands of years ago by a rockslide, the filmmaker rotated the camera 180 degrees, as if tipping us over on our heads in the slide.
