Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Werner Herzog's newest documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the cave paintings at Chuvet Cave and it is one of his most interesting documentaries to date. For those who don't want to look it up, the Chuvet Cave was discovered in 1994 after being sealed by a landslide for more than 20,000 years. Amidst some amazingly beautiful rock formations (forming stalagmites, crystal studded rock, waves of calcite, calcite covered skulls of extinct megafauna!) the explorers found the oldest collection of cave paintings yet discovered and later it was found that the paintings were done over an amazingly long span of time in between (over 5000 years in some cases). The cave was re-sealed off and now only a handful of people (primarily scientists) are allowed to visit each year. Herzog was granted the rare privelage and for a brief period of time he and his crew were allowed to film these artifacts of human imagination. The images (in 100% non-crappy 3D!) of the cave paintings and the gorgeous undisturbed rock formations alone are worth the price of admission, however, Herzog is the real star of the show. Fans of his previous work will be well aquainted with Herzog's ability to draw in many different sources and synthesis a brilliant insight, seemingly on the spot. To Herzog the cave paintings aren't just remarkable artifacts, they're windows into the minds of prehistoric man, they're a starting point to try and find the humans behind the art. I don't think I could recommend this movie more enthusiastically!
Sounds excellent. I shall have to see if I can find a showing. I was always fascinated by the cave art in France and Spain.
As an aside, you might want to petition to have this moved to the Movie subforum. It is probably more relevant for that subforum, and your thread will get lost in all the noise down here in the OTD =)