The Cave and the Mirage. Mythologies of the Origin of the World and Cinema in Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Fata Morgana by Werner Herzog

This chapter aims to analyze the aesthetical construction of Werner Herzog’s cinema focussing on the continuity between the mythologies of the origin of human culture and those of cinematic vision, especially taking in consideration two films: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) and Fata Morgana (1970). The analysis of the case studies will avoid to focus on a chronological perspective, but rather on an intertextual and meta-cinematic dimension. Both these films debate the origin of the humanity recurring to a reflection about the materialisation of the filmic image, referring to the Plato’s cave and the optical illusion of the mirage as two possible founding myth of the cinematographic vision.