Pyrenean Indians in three dimensions: discovery and history of “Euskadi”, film in relief of Louis Lumière (1936)

Abstract

In 1937, a three-dimensional short film called “Euskadi” premiered in Paris. Shot with the pioneering technique of “cinéma en relief” devised two years earlier by Louis Lumière, this unknown film has been missing until, in 2016, the research group NOR of the UPV/EHU found it in Paris. The present work studies the discovery and history of this rarity of 3D cinema, analysing it in its cinematographic context (the French cinema of the 1930s and Lumière’s invention), political (the Spanish Civil War in the Basque Peninsula, and the calm north of its border), and cultural (the numerous documentaries made by foreign filmmakers on the mainland Basque Country).