This film takes the spectator on the first tracks of the cinematographer through 20,000 years of Paleolithic art. Foolish proposal? Not at all! A new reading of the rock art paintings and engravings reveals numerous cases of stop-action, a fundamental stage of animated film, in the movement of animals represented on walls. Toward the end of the Paleolithic, an incredible mechanism even makes its appearance, seeming to create an animation with a couple of images. This perplexes many cinema experts. But that’s not all. The cave artists apparently were even devoted to the graphic story: a way of telling stories with sounds and images, in immersions as in cinema, but without settling the spectator in a chair. This is an amazing investigation deep into the heart of the mankind’s cultural DNA.
Screening time: Sunday, May 7, 5:35 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 54 min.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Pascal Cuissot and Marc Azema
Producer: MC4 Productions, Jean-Pierre Bailly
Producer Web site: http://en.unifrance.org/directories/company/48006/mc4
Distributor: ZED
Distributor Web site: http://www.zed.fr/en/tv/distribution/catalogue/programme/stone-age-cinema