![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Werner-Herzog-filming-Cave-of-Forgotten-Dreams.jpg\" "\\"Werner")
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Werner Herzog\u2019s latest documentary is an awe-inspiring 3D exploration of the ancient Chauvet cave in France.<\/p>\n
Almost working as a companion piece to Encounters at the End of the World<\/a> (2007), which explored the vastness exteriors of the South Pole, this film takes an interior look at a truly remarkable place.<\/p>\n The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave<\/a> in southern France was discovered in 1994 and contains paintings and markings dating back thousands of years to the Paleolithic era<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enter Herzog, a filmmaker with a knack of unearthing the poetic in nature, who became interested in filming inside the carefully preserved caves, which the public are not allowed to enter.<\/p>\n Unlike his documentaries about eccentric individuals (e.g. Grizzly Man<\/a> or The White Diamond<\/a>), this is more about a place and the dream-like feelings which it inspires.<\/p>\n Filled with stalactites, pawprints and the bones of extinct animals, the interior of the caves are hypnotic, filled with charcoal drawings which suggest Paleolithic people were practising an early form of visual entertainment, or \u2018proto-cinema\u2019 as Herzog calls it.<\/p>\n After receiving special permission from the French government to film inside – albeit with some heavy restrictions – the German director and his small crew used specially modified 3D cameras and lights to capture the extraordinary images inside.<\/p>\n This adds another layer to the project as it becomes about the actual filming, as well as what the images captured might mean, and the crew and their equipment become part of the action, giving the whole thing a v\u00e9rit\u00e9 feel. <\/p>\n