Hacker Cinema
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
2010 · Film · documentary · 90 min
Directed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.
18 positive1 mixed4 neutralfrom 23 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
26 comments on Hacker News
Herzog talks about this a bit in his cave-painting movie[0]. It's fascinating to think that for thousands of years, our ancestors lived without any significant change to their world. I like to imagine that they were pretty happy with that (subject to the normal animal stresses of survival) -- but as you say, it's impossible to tell.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmMUlNeLApU
Romanian postage stamp from 2001: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Romania_stamp_2001_2400L_Steppe_Wisent_Chauvet_Cave.jpg
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/23/first-impressions
Also check out Herzog's 2010 documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"
The nonstop gibberish about "AI" bores me to tears. These paintings suggest a different view of what it means to become "conscious".
http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/e-reserve/shestakow/SHESHAAH1051.pdf
Incredible movie.
It makes a fantastic double bill with Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams". I feel his weird epilogue monologue epilogue links them well.
Both movies span and ponder on such a vast period of time, which is awe inspiring, terrifying and fascinating.
Amazing, hearing it played sends chills down my spine.
It's not as old, but in Wernor Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams", an archeologist plays a 30,000 year old vulture bone flute. It even uses the pentatonic scale!
Some links about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUCBBDV2Tzk https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/flute-of-forgotten-dreams/ https://www.npr.org/2009/06/24/105823127/a-little-flute-music-to-warm-the-cave
The cave firelight is fascinating in the film "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" by Werner Herzog, where he documents the art of the Chauvet caves of Southern France.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664894/
A related film I have not seen but have on watch list is Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the Chauvet cave art.
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France and captures the oldest known pictorial creations of humanity.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664894/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_16
I recall reading “Ten years beneath the earth” by Norbert Castaret, a contemporary of Martel, and a great speleologist of the time.
He would strip naked, grease himself up (both for warmth and lubrication), put a candle and lifeboat matches “in the one pocket of which man is still possessed in his natural state”, and squirm into spring outlets. More often than not, his illumination was a candle, or perhaps a lantern in a bigger cave.
He comes to mind as I recall him describing seeing cave paintings by candlelight, and the flickering light providing animation and life to them.
I also seem to recall Herzog talking about the same in his “Cave of forgotten dreams” documentary, along with the topology of the underlying rock sculpting light and dark to provide another layer of context and meaning to the paintings.
Anyway. Neat paper, and good to see this getting serious consideration.
Highly recommended Werner Herzog documentary film about a cave in France:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog is about absolutely stunning cave art discovered in France and immediately preserved by the government. The cave was immediately sealed off from the public and a team of professionals has studied it ever since. They installed pathways to prevent damage, climate control, special lights, etc. Werner was the first person they let film inside. Absolutely incredible film. We watched it on a lark and we were all mesmerized. It isn’t just about the art but about ancient Stone Age man in general.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
> I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any.
> The last few books I read were mostly filled with fluff, anecdotes, stories, jokes, and trivialities.
> I thought that online content was roughly equivalent to 80% of what I'd get from reading actual books for 20% of the effort.
For self improvement and pop-business books, it's more like you can get 99% of the value from 5% of the effort by reading about the book, or skimming it, rather than reading it closely.
> Are books worth it?
You need to know what this "it" is first. I don't mean that flippantly. Do many people find reading books useful or enriching or valuable? Oh, yes, certainly. Now: worth what? To you? Are films worth "it"? Are Casablanca, The Seventh Seal, the Up documentary series, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Mars Attacks!, and Debbie does Dallas, worth "it"? Are they all replaceable with a bunch of 5- to 15-minute Youtube videos?
> Is it more true for some fields than others?
Self-improvement, pop-business/leadership books, and generally anything written to sell consulting services (there's a lot of that in both those categories) are regarded as kinda jokes. If you're looking there for wisdom you're combing the desert for a pearl.
> Is it more true for older books?
The filter is that if a book is still considered good decades, centuries, or millennia after it was written, it very probably is good. Good books somtimes don't pass this filter (these are periodically rediscovered) for various reasons. But almost no bad or low-value books pass it.
> Isn't most of the information from books freely available online?
Not at all. Start studying any topic past the surface level and the only way you'll get any further "online" is buying or pirating ebooks. Keep digging—not even that far—and you'll find some that do not exist in digital form, not even on Library Genesis. If you want to seriously learn about a topic, pick up a good academic book on it, then follow up on all the books they (very probably) mention in their introduction as other major works on the topic, and maybe also the books that book directly credits as references. Often this is a faster and more accurate way to learn what the expert consensus of "foundational" works in a topic is than trying to find that out online, let alone trying to learn the information contained in those works purely online, without books (usually impossible).
> Am I missing out?
What is "it"?
> One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment. I read very slowly and I don't remember everything I read either.
Take notes.
> Even if I wanted to read books, I just don't know which ones I should start with, out of the 1000 "must-read" books in my reading list.
Stop. Pick, like, five that seem really important or that you just most want to read. Aim for variety, don't pick five all on the same topic. Ignore the rest until you're done. Don't even think about them. If you're not going to finish five there's no damn point in maintaining and stressing out over a list of 1,000. They'll still be there when you've finished your five.
One further note: as hinted at by the movie comparison above, reading a book is a process and that process is part of the effect of the book. The time it takes, the curation or generation of material by one author or editor or a team of same working together, the focus and intention of the creators, these matter. Reading 200 blog posts is not the same experience as reading a book, even if they mostly cover the same territory. A tree can become boards, but boards cannot become a tree.
Not the same cave, but I highly recommend this Werner Herzog documentary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
There is a 3D version of Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and it is one of the best uses of 3D that I've seen in a film. Being able to see the depth in the walls literally adds another dimension to the experience.
I would recommend Kevin Kelly's website truefilms.com for a great list of documentaries on a large variety of topics. No matter what your interests are you're sure to find something interesting on here.
Werner Herzog has produced a number of fascinating documentaries that are just as good as his fictional films in my opinion. Wings of Hope, Encounters at the End of the World, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Grizzly Man--he has an enormous talent for drawing profound, almost mythical ideas out of the subjects he captures. He's not for everyone, certainly, but his films have a unique vision you don't often see in documentaries.
I've only ever seen a few 3D films - Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Gravity, Dial M for Murder - but I greatly appreciated the experience in all cases.
Despite the fact that I generally agree that 3D distracts more from a film experience than it contributes, I have to recommend that if you ever get the opportunity to see Werner Herzog's 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' in 3D that you do so.
The 3D video captures qualities of the cave paintings you'd never realize in 2D.
And virtually no person alive is going to get to see these paintings in person so it's the closest you'll ever get.
My only problem with "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" was that it probably should have been an amazing 45 minute film, but he stretched it to twice that to make it into a feature. By the end, what was initially magical felt diminished by repetition.
In contrast, when I visited Grotte de Niaux [1], we were allowed only a brief moment to see the cave paintings to keep the cave temperature constant. That limited time was truly special.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Niaux
By the way, I can't recommend the 3D version of Cave of Forgotten dreams enough. I usually hate 3D movies but there is something really special about being able to see the depth in the cave paintings.
I'll have to watch this one. I enjoy Herzog's movies, especially the documentaries he narrates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Abyss_%28film%29
For one, I simply like hearing his voice I think. But of course he is a good director as well. There is something different about his approach, and it seems he is more passionate about the topics, he goes all in and becomes rather obsessed about stuff. He also appears compassionate towards his subjects. In his documentaries about the capital punishment, for example, he tried not to take sides or be accusatory, at least not in an obvious in your face type way.
Netflix recommendations have essentially never worked for me. It occasionally identifies a category I might be interested in, but essentially drops the ball on actual content. I think the best film I've seen recommended in a genre was Charlie Victor Romeo.
There are still some excellent movies (Primer, Metropolis, Ronin, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn't There, etc...), particularly classics. And the documentaries are probably under appreciated (Genius on Hold, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, both Cosmos, etc...). So, someone is probably paying attention. I have to randomly search for specific things from time to time though. Sometimes sites like https://reddit.com/r/bestofnetflix help.
One of the bigger problems I've noticed is that some movies tend to be cut short though. It's almost never a director's cut.
Wow very cool--also check out Werner Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams for a fantastic look at the Chauvet cave in France. It's a typical Herzog documentary that dives into the cave and the emotions it creates with people rather than going over the rote history or facts about it. It's also shot in 3D and if you have the hardware to see it in that format it is absolutely worth it! The cave drawings twist and bend around the walls so seeing it in 3D is a very rare instance where the experience is vastly improved by the technology. You can still see the normal version on Netflix streaming in the US though: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70145740?trkid=13752289
No, not really. You can tell a true story with a narrative film, or a documentary; what Herzog believes is that there is a truth beyond a strictly factual accounting, and he makes movies informed by this belief. There are a variety of techniques, but the most obvious is inserting himself into someone else's story, whether this is talking explicitly about the difficulties of making Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, or the scenes in Grizzly Man where he views Treadwell's death footage and then makes an in-camera judgement about showing it more widely; or basically all of Little Dieter Needs To Fly, wherein he takes Dengler back to Indochina and subjects him to much of the same suffering he experienced in his escape.
This also works in reverse, of course, notably with Fitzcarraldo, where he replicates an insane feat of human ingenuity that wasn't actually part of the real life Fitzcarrald's story.
In any event, all of Herzog's movies are worth viewing from my highly fan-boyish perspective.
Cave of forgotten dreams is probably the best documentary I ever saw. Those cave paintings are truly breathtaking, even when captured on video.
Very good read, thanks for posting!
More images from the Chauvet cave that might be interesting to see in that light:
https://kerritargett.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/cave-paining-10.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OKDK4Aq9HbE/TdEpBomuxQI/AAAAAAAABZg/-zMFSI-YvXY/s1600/chauvet080623_r17477_p4651.jpg
http://www.warrencriswell.com/The%20Membrane/chauvet-rhinos-lions-w.jpg
Also the superb documentary about Grotte Chauvet, "The Cave of forgotten dreams" by Werner Herzog talks about animation:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664894/
In the Chauvet Cave there are cave paintings that are 32,000 year old[1]. But what's even more interesting, is that some of these paintings are only 27,000 year old. Meaning, that these people knew about the place for almost 5000 years. Can you imagine that kind of continuity?
The documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams[2] presents the cave in a breathtaking detail, definitely worth a watch.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave#Dating
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kULwsoCEd3g
Only 6000 years? Well, that's nothing next to the Chauvet Cave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave ), where they found 35000 years old paintings...
This is actually a weird coincidence to see this on HN tonight, since I watched "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams ) this evening. Having two hours to spend in Paris before a rendezvous, and seeing the great critics, I thought "Hey, I'm not usually into art / paintings / museums, but let's give this a try...".
The documentary was fascinating. The paintings look so fresh, it's as if they were done yesterday... But they are 30k - 35k years old. This really puts things into perspective...
It's hard to explain, but the effect was kind of similar to watching a Sagan video ( http://saganseries.com/ ). Instead of marveling at the size of the universe when compared to our tiny planet, I was marveling at how short the recorded history is when compared to the thousand of years of prehistory. I knew about this theoretically, but it never really hit home before...
+1 Herzog. His latest 'documentary', Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is wonderful.