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A JOURNEY OUT OF TIME The discovery of the caves of Lacave
There are 300 inhabitants in the village of Lacave.
It is located in the north of the Lot, a department in south-west France.
Every year, close to 100 000 people stop there to visit the caves, discovered in 1905 by Armand Viré.
What drove Armand Viré towards this discovery ?
What strange force brings those visitors towards the depths of the Earth ?
Why is Man, since prehistoric times, mysteriously connected to caves ?
Between Quercy and Périgord, the cliffs carry on their sides the traces of Nature's colossal forces.
They are the incredible witnesses of the intense geological activities of times gone by.
A thick slab of limestone sediment, left by the sea hundreds of millions of years ago,
constitutes the start of the rock platform for numerous small valleys.
Ancient seas and then rivers slowly eroded the rock,
leaving sculpted scenery with a particular pattern, with anarchic shapes made ragged through time.
For thousands of years, water has been accomplishing its task.
The Dordogne, relic of ancient oceans, cuts deeply through the scenery,
moving through the bottom of the valley, like a gigantic snake.
Chasms and caves yawn horrifically in the heart of this scenery.
Long ago, many of these cavities were inhabited by primitive people
and a mystical rapport built around symbols and mysteries was often established between these first men and the caves.
In 1902, Armand Viré came to stay with some friends in the small village of Lacave.
At the time, he was one of the great caving pioneers, together with Edouard-Alfred Martel
and Louis Armand with whom he was close friends.
In the many manuscripts found in his study, Armand Viré wrote of his increasing interest for the limestone plateau of Gramat.
The underground exploration of the plateau was for Armand
a dream he had longed for.
During his stay in Lacave, he finds out that there is supposed to be a chasm, locally referred to as the Igue Saint Sol.
The chasm has always been a source of mystery for the locals.
Strange legends mention this devil's hole.
Hoping to find it, Armand ventures into the woods.
He walks for a long time looking for the coveted passage into the shadows.
Finally, he happens on a gaping hole, 6 metres in diameter and 80 metres deep,
ready to swallow up the first person who would risk entering.
A strange power seems to radiate from the opening.
Armand feels mysteriously drawn towards the bowels of the monster.
In the space of a few hours, ropes and safety equipment were set up
and the perilous descent started.
And then, it was an amazement, a dream, a vertigo.
He discovered one kilometre of underground galleries
decorated with a profusion of stalagmites and stalactites in dazzling white.
After hours spent exploring and marvelling at the discovery he had just made,
he decided, no matter what, to one day present the public with this mind-blowing spectacle.
During the next few weeks, he bought up all the neighbouring plots of land
to allow for the underground exploitation. And his crazy project got started.
But Armand did not think that starting the visits from the chasm itself would be possible :
the descend would be too dangerous.
His research uncovered a number of cavities
which could have been linked to the Igue Saint Sol in the past.
He then had the crazy idea to start digging into the massive rock face
to create a passage towards the chasm,
starting from the Cavity de Jouclas, located near the centre of Lacave.
At the time, that spot was being used by the locals to shelter the religious services
while the church was being rebuilt in 1902 and 1903.
Worshipping there took on a spectacular character,
a grandeur enhanced by the powerful and picturesque location.
In April 1904, the locals were rather surprised to see
a thirty strong team of miners starting to clear the area.
Armand discovered some tools there dating back 20 000 years BC,
additional proof that the local caves had been inhabited.
After this discovery, Armand and his men started the incredible task of digging a tunnel from the Cavity de Jouclas,
through the mountain towards the much sought after galleries.
And for many months, day and night, the bowels of the immense rock were forced open with dynamite.
Day and night its powerful voice was heard.
The limestone plateau relentlessly vomited its entrails of clay and stones.
At last, after 400 metres and 15 months spent working tirelessly, the rock is opened
and the men are staring at a layer of coarse gravel covered with sand, then clay.
They have found an important natural gallery.
But to get in, they will have to get through a thick layer of soft and dangerous clay
which could swallow up the reckless for ever.
The work goes on for three weeks, dangerous and back breaking.
The men, an elite team, are getting downhearted.
Some even leave the site, stating that their efforts are pointless and that the whole enterprise is pure madness.
However, they are getting there. Armand knows it. Armand can feel it.
« Three days ! » said Christopher Columbus, « three days and I give you a new world ! » .
The inhabitants started to wonder about the man's mad project.
Who is this stranger defying the cliff ? What incredible treasure could there be at the end of the tunnel ?
And suddenly, on may 27th 1905, the distant murmur of some water droplets can be heard.
The last fuse is lit. The charge explodes.
And Armand is able to make out an enormous black hole and a strange glimmering coming through.
Armand then realised that he had made a mistake with his calculations.
He had discovered a new cave, an access towards never seen before galleries.
This cave, closed off for thousands of years, was of such beauty that he decided to drop the idea of joining up with the Igue St Sol.
What were this man's feelings, at that precise moment, the very first of them all to enter this *** territory ?
He who has not known the fever of discovery has not lived yet.
Unforgettable moments when the body does not count, becoming the locomotive machine of the mind, the imagination and the eyes.
The « Terra Incognita », the potholer's everlasting quest, was there, offered to Armand.
What would later be referred to as « the Marvellous caves of Lacave » had been discovered.
At a depth of more that 100 metres under the hill, Armand discovers kilometres of underground wonders.
Impressive concretions, shaped like organs, cover the rock face.
In this inspiring place, he meets some strange animals straight out of stories and legends :
an enormous toad seems to be standing guard,
a fabulous animal from ancient mythology
as well as a frightening spider.
Ancient earthquakes and subsidence have left numerous marks of the Earth's anger.
In gigantic caverns, improbably large rocks toppled over, tumbled down against one another,
give the grandiose impression of a sublime chaos.
Amongst those lunar landscapes, strange shapes sculpted and contoured patiently
by erosion over many millions of years can be seen on every surface.
Further along, a gigantic petrified waterfall commands respect.
Armand then notices some strange concretions, incredibly delicate, those are the famous soda straws;
then myriads of stalactites and stalagmites lining vaults and rock faces.
In places, time has allowed for some of them to meet up and form magnificent columns.
A few metres lower down, some unusual natural dams and immense underground lakes
give Armand the feeling that he is on another planet.
Crystallised concretions called « eccentrics » sparkle and twinkle
in total anarchy, some of them with strange colours or even magical phosphorescence.
In this other world, the loss of one's bearings in terms of time and space is total,
and Armand's senses are in complete paradox with the outside.
The extremely damp atmosphere, the smell of the cave, the sounds echoing in the depths,
everything which before seemed minor and mundane now took on a different magnitude.
Shapes are primitive, primary, nothing is built.
What era could this be happening in ?
On the outside, Armand is the prisoner of a certain notion of time
but in the cave, time seems to stop.
The place is inscribed within the span of time itself.
This path between primitive and contemporary takes him deep into his own animal nature,
and maybe it was this indefinable feeling that he wanted to share with as many people as possible
when he decided to open the cave.
But what strange force drove this man in this impossible quest for the rest of his life ?
What was he really looking for in the entrails of the Earth ?
The cave is one of these places which reminds man of his vulnerability and finitude.
It allows him to bury himself in time immemorial,
or rather are we in a place completely « out of time » ?
We can reencounter our primitive and forgotten links with the earth, the rock, the world's origins.
Far away from our modern society, nothing seems certain anymore, nothing seems real.
The cave represents obvious death, wide open, feared.
But it is also secretly desired because it is questioning, absolutely alien, associated with the fantasy of returning to the mother matrix,
the final fusion fantasy of the individual into the Everything.
Behind the apparent coarseness of the rock, an original truth is hidden,
a supposed motherly tenderness, the mystical link with Mother Earth.
A place full of mystery and arousing both our most ancestral attraction and fears,
wouldn't it be a refuge to which we secretly aspire to ?
If we really let go, would the cave allow us to forget our life as surface beings
to be able to find a more profound being and more authentic ?
Wasn't this Armand's ultimate quest ?
In 1949, this mad passion would eventually prove fatal.
Already well into his 80's, he falls as he is climbing back up a chasm in the Dordogne.
Armand never really recovers from this accident and dies two years later, eaten away by his internal demons.
Like a sixth continent, the underground world has always intrigued,
sometimes terrified, sometimes fascinated men, depending on the era.
In such places may be found incredible paintings, sculptures, engravings, fascinating testimonies of a spiritual life
where the limits of art, magic and religion are difficult to ascertain.
Were the caves a good place to connect with the occult ?
Could it be that they influenced the first men in their pursuit of artistic expression ?
The cave brings back Man to his primary state, to a timeless state,
to nature's primary chaos and face to face with himself.
Armand understood all this.
Through its very silence, the Cave speaks to Us.
Un Voyage hors du Temps - A Journey Out of Time Brought to you by Les Films du Cosmos
Produced, written, shot, edited and directed by Ludovic Maury
The story of the discovery made by Armand Viré on May 27th 1905
Assistant Location Manager Abel Contenssou
Narrator - Voice over François-Henri Soulié
Voice over recording Olivier Caors
Archive footage : Armand Viré, courtesy of Jean-François and Christian Host, Armand Viré's descendants
Soundtrack
Translation and English subtitles Anne-Marie Luigi-Way
This film is fully self-financed : it has been made available on the internet to all, in order to be shared and transmitted.
If you would like to receive the DVD and to know more about the film, please contact : www.unvoyage-horsdutemps.com or www.lesfilmsducosmos.com