1. Origin Stories and Inspirations

Prehistory has always been a source of fascination for me. History books at school wrote about it in such a mysterious way, as if it were a lost time about which we know so little. Moreover, it was strange how this period lasted for hundreds of thousands of years but received only a few pages in a history book that covers all of history. All the subsequent periods received much more attention. This touches on the essence of what makes prehistory so special. At some point, people walked the Earth who were as intelligent as we are and experienced the world just as vividly; yet, they left almost no traces behind...

In the teaser for the film, I portrayed my wonder for prehistory. English subtitles available. 

This fascination remained in the background among many other interests until three years ago, when I saw a few things in quick succession that led me to the idea for *The Legs of the Bison*. First, I read *Sapiens* by Yuval Noah Harari. A very well-known book that tells the story of humankind, from apes to atomic bombs. The first chapter fueled my curiosity immensely. Harari portrays the hunter-gatherer past as a wild, undiscovered time in which much more happened than we can ever imagine. Although archaeologists have been digging into this past for 200 years and research techniques are continually improving, we still miss the vast majority of the puzzle pieces. And some pieces are forever lost. I had to learn more about prehistory.

Next, I watched the powerful documentary *The Cave of Forgotten Dreams* (2010) by German filmmaker Werner Herzog. This film gave me a composite impression: we can barely imagine how long prehistory lasted and how much of it is lost, but sometimes there is solid evidence of people who lived and experienced the world as vividly as we do. Herzog received unique permission from the French Ministry of Culture to film inside the Chauvet Cave in southern France. This cave was only discovered in 1991, in pristine condition, and contains hundreds of spectacular animal drawings. The location was immediately closed to the public to prevent the same deterioration issues that occurred with the famous Lascaux cave. The documentary not only features beautiful footage of the artworks (some over 30,000 years old) but also provides much food for thought. Accompanied by dreamy music, Herzog reflects on what we see, on the lost world in which the artists lived, and on the incredible things scientists have discovered. For example, he says in his iconic voice-over: "…there are figures of animals overlapping with each other.

The striking point here is that after carbon dating, there are strong indications that some overlapping figures were drawn almost 5000 years apart." He then reflects: "The sequence and duration of time is unimaginably fast today. We are locked in history, and they were not." 5000 years! How can you imagine such a period? I first thought of the past five years. Then I could get a fairly good idea of how long the last 50 years were. The last 500 years are already difficult. And then 5000 years… How much happens in such a long time? How many cultural changes occurred between the people who made the first drawing and the second? From these dark seas of time, the paintings of Chauvet emerge as sudden flashes of light, like a spectacular display of human presence.

Another scene that strongly impacted me was about music. In southern Germany, some flutes dating back 35,000 years have been found. These are the world's oldest musical instruments. Researchers made exact replicas of these flutes, and they turned out to be tuned to the pentatonic scale. For those who aren't music nerds: this is a chord still used in much music today. We don't know exactly who made the flutes, what tunes they played, or why, but we can certainly establish that someone played the flute. With such a find, prehistory suddenly speaks very vividly. I could hear prehistory. I could play a tune with the same scale. I could envision a flutist in a prehistoric field. Still a fantasy, but with a solid basis. And so, that flute became part of my film, and one of the characters became 'the flutist' (a fun fact: in the documentary, an archaeologist named Wulf Hein plays his replica of the flute. I managed to find the man online and asked if he could help with the film. He then made a flute for me, but it got lost in the mail…).

A later scene shows the drawing that inspired my film's story. We first see animal drawings suggesting movement: rhinos butting heads and lions appearing to look around the corner at prey. All on undulating rock walls: "For them, the animals perhaps appeared moving, living… The walls themselves are not flat but have their own dynamic, their own movement, which was utilized by the artists." It often seems in such caves that the artists chose surfaces that contributed to a 3D effect, emphasizing body parts and allowing a wall to tell a story. And then Herzog showed the bison with eight legs, a drawing that certainly contained no anatomical error: "We should note that the artist painted this bison with eight legs, suggesting movement, almost a form of proto-cinema." What an extraordinary painting! My imagination ran wild with what the possible origins of the drawing might be. How might that prehistoric person have come up with such a depiction of the bison?

Finally, I read another book, *The Dawn of Everything* (2022) by David Graeber and David Wengrow. These authors present a grand new view of history, based on the latest archaeological insights and a deep look at indigenous peoples, with a touch of anarchistic activism. The cliché view of prehistory is that people lived in "small, egalitarian roaming bands." Free and unrestrained, with little possession or hierarchy. Until agriculture disrupted things by introducing permanent settlement, property, and thus social inequality. This view, which dates back to Rousseau, is now outdated by archaeology and is also contradicted by contemporary descriptions of indigenous tribes in North and South America before Europeans arrived in 1492. Hunter-gatherers apparently did not always live 'on the move' but sometimes spent large parts of the year in one place. Some areas were so rich in food that habitation became (semi-)permanent.

Without people becoming farmers right away, by the way. There are settlements in Ukraine where thousands of people lived in stone houses with no trace of agriculture. Many tribes likely had a rhythm where they roamed in small groups during winter, when food was scarce, and then gathered every summer with hundreds of individuals or more when food was abundant. Thus, summer was an opportunity for cultural festivities, partner exchanges, political experimentation—a temporary intense gathering of people. This idea simmered in my imagination, and I couldn't put down *The Dawn of Everything*. How would such a gathering take place? What wild parties might there have been in the distant past?

No large 'festival grounds' from the Ice Age have been found near Chauvet, but that doesn't mean much. After 30,000 years of geological upheaval, no trace of such a gathering may remain. One has to imagine that Europe's coastline was often 100 meters lower than it is now during the Ice Age. A large part of southern France is currently underwater where there was once habitable land. So, the festival ground might be waiting off the coast of Nice or it might be completely destroyed. Or we just haven't found it yet. In short, prehistory has never been so intriguing, and with the rich knowledge from The Dawn of Everything, I had a theoretical framework to tell a story. I was convinced: I had to make an epic film set in the Stone Age. A story developed about a young hunter who injures his shoulder and can no longer hunt. He would reinvent himself as a storyteller, artist, and shaman, and complete his journey during the great summer gathering.

Making a big studio film is, of course, easier said than done. I started the screenplay with full enthusiasm, but I soon found out that a studio doesn't just drop millions when you send in an idea (and sometimes they don't even let you send anything in). Then Freek (whom I had been making videos with in high school and who now directs for *Het Klokhuis*, among other things) gave me the golden tip: why not start with a short film first? It's manageable, and you can practice all the concepts. With a small budget and not too many cast & crew. It's all doable yourself, a stepping stone to something bigger. This made my dream achievable, and the first steps could be taken. Plans quickly began to take shape, and I derived immense pleasure from setting up this film. A shorter, much simpler story started to fit the short film format.

I approached a dozen archaeologists, who gave me lengthy advice, and filled my notebooks with ideas. Regular coffee meetings with Freek. I realized that a lot had to be done, but I kept it manageable by proceeding as follows. I made a list of things that ultimately needed to be arranged and then asked myself, "What is the most difficult thing? And what do I really need before I can move on to other things?" One of the first difficult things was finding a cave. Do you have a cave at home that I can use? No, neither do I, but it would be really cool to make a film about a cave painting actually in a cave. The managers of the marl caves in Limburg were, to say the least, not open to a film project like mine. France or Germany would probably be too far, and the caves there aren't just lying around. But through my grandfather, I met an incredibly friendly archaeologist, Jeroen Snelten. He not only had good general advice but also knew of an abandoned marl cave in Belgium where we could film without problems. And indeed, we visited the cave with my father. It was abandoned, had the right shape, the right walls. And hardly anyone comes there. Perfect. 

So, step by step, the film grew, and now we are in the crowdfunding phase with the first shooting day just a month away. It's incredibly exciting and amazing that everything has come this far!! If you've read this, thank you so much for your donation, and I hope to see you at the premiere!

April 5, 2024