Breaking taboos: Inside Spain’s first naked cinema screening

Picture the scene.

Around 50 spectators enter a cinema, put their bags down and take off their coats.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, they proceed to spread a towel on the cinema seats and take off all their clothes. Naked as the day they were born, they start chatting with their neighbours before the lights go down and the film starts.

Now there’s a trip to the talkies worth remembering.

The nudist event took place in the Lys cinema in Valencia and the Girona cinema in Barcelona for the screening of Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romero’s Christmas thriller Tú no eres yo last Sunday, becoming the first nudist film screening in Spain’s history.

Sadly, the Madrid nudist screening was ultimately cancelled.

The many of nudists belonging to the Valencian Naturist Association played extras in the film.

Juan Ángel Manzano, a member of the naturist organization, told El Pais: “Marisa Crespo needed people aged around 60 for a scene in which naked people perform a ritual. It is at the end of the film and the scene is important.”

“It was spectacular to work with them and our naked presence also normalized the situation for the actors, who felt more comfortable naked,” he explained.

Manzano told the co-director “that it would be really cool to see the film naked” – something Crespo took on board.

She understood that beyond the headline-grabbing nature of the bold initiative (especially during the chilly Winter months) lies a larger issue: the fact that nudity still generates many taboos and misunderstandings. Speak to any nudist and they’ll tell you that it is less about taking off clothes and more about shedding layers of impositions that can burden a person in everyday society.

Segimon Rovira, vice-president of the organization, pointed out to EBE that as naturists “the idea is to be naked in natural areas: in the mountains, on beaches, but in winter we can’t do that and so we organize visits to exhibitions or the museums… Not that we promote going to the movies naked, but it is good to normalize nudity and separate it from any sexual connotation.”

The president of the Valencian association, Patxi Esparza, frames the initiative as “a path towards other opportunities and normalizing nudism.”

The organisers of the events in Valencia and Barcelona hope events like this will continue to grow, with ambitions to expand into more cultural spaces across the country.

Additional sources • El Pais, EBE