Free Party: A Folk History (Trinder Films 2024)
A major new, independent documentary on the birth of the Free Party movement.
Free Party: A Folk History is major new, independently made, feature documentary
following the birth of the free party movement in the late 80s and early 90s and the impact
it's had on our present times. The film follows the inception of the movement, a meeting
between ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher's last days in power, and the
explosive years that followed, leading up the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 -
the largest ever illegal rave, which provoked the drastic change of the laws of trespass
with the notorious introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.
So whats the story?
1990, UK. The initial euphoria of the acid house orbital raves had waned after a
government crack down on illegal ‘pay parties’. The energy, creativity and radical promise
of the ‘second summer of love” assimilated into clubland, or commercial ‘rip-off raves’
often charging £50 a ticket. And with the recession beginning to bite, the dream seemed
over. But a new underground began to emerge with a radical idea..
Sound systems, such as Nottingham’s anarchic collective DiY, with their ‘everyone
welcome’ attitude, London’s Fund-e-Mental and Spiral Tribe, with their cult-like image,
and acid house party pioneers Tonka begin to appear across the country, in clubs, small
squats and ‘broken’ warehouses as an antidote to mainstream clubbing.
Meanwhile..
In the west country, despite being badly bruised by Thatcher's attempts to destroy their
lifestyle at the "Battle of the Beanfield", members of the travelling community, such as
Circus Warp and the Free Party People had the know-how, the spaces and the
infrastructure to enable amazing free parties, under the stars.
And at the Travellers free field at Glastonbury 1990 - the anarchic free spirit of the
travellers and the incredible music and energy of the acid house generation came
together for the first time and something new was born.
With more and more sound systems being formed including Bedlam, LSDiezil,
Adrenalin, Techno Travellers and many others these free parties / festivals began
growing in numbers from small traveller family events of hundreds, to thousands, to tens
of thousands, through word of mouth alone throughout 1990-1992. This culminated at
Castlemorton Common in May 1992.
Headline TV news for a week, between 20-60,000 partied for 7 days.
But now the British establishment, and the media had its latest folk devils, promising to
middle England to crush the movement out of existence, leading to violence and arrests
(Spiral Tribe being arrested at Castlemorton) and draconian changes in the law itself with
the Criminal Justice Bill in 1994.
Many travelling communities found their life hard to continue in the UK after the Criminal
Justice Act was past, and the pressure from the state would also push Spiral Tribe,
Bedlam and others across the newly formed EU, creating gigantic Teknival utopias
dwarfing the size of the UK free festivals. DiY meanwhile, alongside their regular clubnights,
kept the free parties going in the north, inspiring a host of other local sound
systems such as Smokescreen, before heading out across the world, including Thailand,
Ibiza and the west coast of the USA, where they met ex-Tonka DJs with a scene of their
own. The scene would fracture into a myriad of disparate sub genres and scenes, with
the unity of those initial years seemingly gone.
Now over 30 years later with new laws criminalising trespass in the UK
the story is as relevant as ever as once again Travellers, Protestors and people aiming for
alternative lifestyles find their lifestyle under threat and draconian right wing
governments using tech to infringe on freedoms across the world.
Free Party’s key contributors include members of Spiral Tribe (arrested at Castlemorton)
DiY, Bedlam, Circus Warp as well as DJs and producers such as Chris Liberator, Youth
from Killing Joke, Colin Dale, Charlie Hall from Drum Club and many others. The
documentary is being made by director Aaron Trinder, himself a DJ and music producer for
many years (with Big Hair, U-Freqs), who now runs Trinder Films a production company focused
on original story telling for medium and long form .
Aaron says “This film is a unique look at a much underrepresented moment in cultural
history, the last great unifying youth movement, before digital cameras and the internet,
which really challenged the authorities, connected environmental awareness with music
and questioned laws on land rights and trespass. Thematically its incredibly prescient to
today, with new laws on trespass being proposed, illegal parties taking place post
pandemic and 30 years since Castlemorton itself. I’ve got incredible access to unseen
archive and grass-roots stories very seldom heard from the people who lived it”.
