Festivals - Part 23

Fête de l'Humanité

Fête de l'Humanité (Festival of Humanity) is a French festival with music concerts, but it also has hundreds of booths that offer food and drink, art exhibits, promote political causes, and more.  This is the booth of APNEL, the Association for the Promotion of Naturism in Liberty.

The festival is an annual event organized by the left-wing French newspaper L'Humanité.  It is the largest popular gathering in France.  This image is a screen capture from French TV.

APNEL is working to repeal laws criminalizing nudity, and in particular to change the French penal code so that simple nudity is not considered sexual exhibitionism.

Above, some APNEL volunteers in front of their booth in 2016.  Disclosure: I photoshopped this image to remove two naked female volunteers between the two guys who now appear to be arm-in-arm.

Note the hammer and sickle in the neighboring booth here and in the first photo above.  The festival sponsor L'Humanité has a close relationship with the French Communist party, and most of the festival volunteers are Communists, though most of the attendees are not.

This guy is posing as a nude model for festival attendees to try their hand at drawing him.

Jérôme Jolibois, director of APNEL, posing with a festival attendee. Jolibois is a "militant nudist."  He considers the right to be naked in public to be a fundamental human right.

In 2017, several of the APNEL volunteers got painted blue, mimicking the creatures in the movie Avatar.

More blue naturists.

And here are some non-blue naturists in front of the APNEL booth in 2017.  Disclosure: I photoshopped the image to remove a female naturist between the two guys at left. 

Wandering the grounds in 2017.  The sticker on the guy's posterior is an ad for walnuts that says "lick my nuts."

APNEL director Jérôme Jolibois dancing in the street.  He is also co-organizer of the World Naked Bike Ride in Brussels, Belgium.

Jolibois being filmed.  He says that because nudity is banned, people associate nudity with sexuality, but if nudity were commonplace, people would see that nudity is natural, not sexual.