'[REC].1', live horror cinema

From 3 to 6 March, the company La Fura dels Baus will run a live horror film show named [REC].1, based on the film of the same name by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The experience will take place in Utopia126, an old modernist factory in Poblenou.

The project offers the spectator a collective experience that blends performing arts and cinema. It is a "reflection" about the limits of horror and danger and how fear alters rationality, imagination and the perception of reality, survival and justice.

The adventure will begin as a conventional open-air cinema session in the courtyard of Utopia126 until the audience are forced to enter the darkness of the old printing factory. Then, the film will physically overflow from the screen, and the zombies, played by Vidi Vidal, Ferran Plana, Tamara N'dong, Gala Sabaté, Ricardo Castro and Momo Fabré, will appear. 

The experiment links the idea of the virus in the 2007 film to the coronavirus. According to Carlus Padrissa, the artistic director of La Fura dels Baus, "during this pandemic, we have all been zombies at one point or another because we all could spread the disease, and perhaps we have spread it unintentionally, but we have also been victims fleeing from the zombies so as not to fall ill".

[REC].1 wants to spark a therapeutic reflection. "The people who will attend will remember it for the rest of their lives," Padrissa says. The activity consists of going through a lot of fear – even physical fear — to learn to overcome it since, as the director suggests, "fear is bad because it divides people and can awaken the worst within us. Nowadays, we have many fears: fear of sickness, fear of those who are different, fear of poverty, etc. And when we are afraid, we don't trust".

The project has the collaboration of Jaume Balagueró, who says: "The film was born with the intention of being interactive and generating a collective experience, and La Fura's proposal takes a step further in the same direction because it knows very well how to work with the interaction with the spectator and how to involve them in a show". The goal is to make "live cinema" amplifying the terror conveyed by the film. "We are making metacinema, a concept that implies the opposite of metaverse because it proposes to live the experience live, in the flesh," claims Padrissa.

Each session has a maximum capacity of 250 people. If you would like to be one of the thousand people that will have the chance to live — and suffer — it, you can get your tickets through this link.