Photo by Michelle Miles via the DokStation Facebook Page
A new documentary is pulling back the tarp on one of the UK’s most radical and misunderstood cultural revolutions. Free Party: A Folk History, directed by Aaron Trinder, offers a vivid, first-hand chronicle of the 1990s free party scene, a grassroots movement that eschewed the rapid rise of commercialization in the music industry with sound systems, squatted land, and anti-establishment ideals into an explosive subculture that left its mark on music and politics across the globe.
Premiering May 30, the film arrives after years in development, originally launched through a crowdfunding campaign in 2021. With interviews from key players like Spiral Tribe, DiY Sound System, Bedlam, Circus Warp, and Colin Dale, Free Party paints a portrait of raves, resistance, and resilience.
From the infamous Castlemorton Common free festival of 1992, which drew upwards of 20,000 people and triggered a national media frenzy, to the legislative backlash of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Trinder’s film traces the movement’s rise, its clashes with authority, and its lasting cultural footprint. That law, infamous for targeting gatherings with “repetitive beats”, effectively criminalised unlicensed raves, but galvanised a generation.
“This film is a unique look at a much-underrepresented moment in cultural history,” Trinder says. “With new laws criminalising protest and trespass across Europe, the story is more relevant than ever.”
The documentary positions the free party scene as a rare moment of unity in post-industrial Britain — a collision of music, environmentalism, and anarchist politics. Trinder calls it “the last great unifying youth movement before the digital age,” one that asked fundamental questions about land rights, ownership, and freedom of assembly.
Spiral Tribe co-founder Mark Angelo Harrison echoes that sentiment: “This documentary uncovers the untold story of one of the UK’s most outlawed cultural movements. The British establishment buries people’s history, celebrating the powerful while criminalising grassroots movements — just as it did with the Free Festival and Free Party scenes.”
Following screenings at several festivals, Free Party: A Folk History will finally reach a broader audience with its streaming release on Friday, May 30. Whether you were there in the mud with the speakers stacked, or you have only heard the distorted basslines through myth and memory, this documentary promises a vital reckoning with rave’s folk roots.
Tickets and more info HERE.
