HANDPAS Film is on its way

The municipality of Fuentes de León, in Extremadura, on the Southwest of Spain, will hold the filming of a 30 minutes long scientific documentary from today. This is part of the activities included within the ‘Hands from the past’ (HANDPAS) Project, an initiative of the Regional Government of Extremadura submitted to the first call for economic funds from the Creative Europe Programme, of the European Commission, which is aimed to support scientific research and dissemination.

The double goal of the HANDPAS Project is to show scientific and technological capacities as well as the excellence in research of Extremadura in high qualification and competitiveness programmes. It also seeks to spread cultural and heritage values of the region into international collaboration projects.

Under these purposes, the Regional Government of Extremadura has developed HANDPAS Project, following the experience gained by the General Direction of Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage at creating high definition 3D records on the panels showing Rock Art in Maltravieso Cave (Cáceres).

HANDPAS got a final score of 91 out 100 at the Creative Europe call. This situated it on the 11th position among 337 international projects participating.

Finally, the European Commission co-funded 30 of the proposed projects and supported HANDPAS with 200.000 euros of the total amount of 359.932,79 euros needed for its whole execution during a three years period (2015-2017).

At this project, the General Secretary of Culture of the Regional Government of Extremadura, leader of the action, counts on two partners, the Italian Study Centre and Museum of Prehistoric Art (Centro Studi e Museo d’Arte Prehistórica – CesMap) of Pinerolo and the Portughese Centre for Higher Education Studies in Mação (Instituto Terra e Memoria -ITM).

SCIENTIFIC DISSEMINATION

HANDPAS has two main approaches. One of them, with scientific character, intends to create a database with three-dimensional digital files of all the representations of Paleolithic hands in the European Rock Art. This will be done thanks to last generation technological and methodological innovations for 3D scanning of Rock Art developed in Extremadura.

The other side of the Project is addressed to dissemination. On the one hand, all generated three-dimensional digital material will be available on a free access online platform so it will be possible to do high quality research about these representations from all around the world, without compromising their preservation.

On the other hand, there will also be the abovementioned documentary, which will be filmed this week nearby and inside the Natural Monument of Fuentes de León Caves. Furthermore, it will contain interventions of specialists from different countries who will reflect on various aspects of this kind of artistic expression, such as technique, chronology or interpretation. It will also include real-time recreations about lifestyle at the moment when the contact between modern humans and Neanderthals had place.

Specialists participating in the film are Jean Clottes (France), Dario Seglie (Italy), Marc Groenen (Belgium), Alister Pike (United Kingdom), Roberto Ontañón (Spain) y Luiz Oosterbeck (Portugal). They all represent highest international institutions in the fields of preservation and research of Rock Art, as UNESCO, IFRAO or UISSP.

Recreations will require staging in the outside of the caves, so intervention of actors can be realistic and rigorous. Once concluded, the documentary will be spread through specialized media and scientific exhibitions and will be shown in different international scientific film festivals.