Aaron Trinder's 'Free Party: a folk history' is a documentary telling the story - or at least some of the stories - of the 1980s/90s free party scene. There is a particular focus on the crossover with the earlier free festival /traveller scene, cross pollinated at Glastonbury and giving rise to Castlemorton in 1992. Interesting interviews with people involved at the time with sound systems including Spiral Tribe, Circus Warp, Bedlam and Nottingham's DiY. It's important to see these in a longer term historical context - people involved with DiY had previously been involved in hunt sabbing and anarchist activism; Steve Bedlam remains active today with Refugee Community Kitchen.
A recent online fundraiser for the film, with the aim of securing a wider release, featured some additional material including a discussion between Aaron and artist Jeremy Deller. The latter mentions going to Reclaim the Streets parties and reflects on the wider politics of free parties and raves:
'that's what's dangerous when things get joined up. Which never really happened with punk, punk was burnt out so quickly, like two years - gone. Then it was just like bands with Top of the Pops. Dance music affected the whole country, it linked up with other people, so it was massively political. The songs weren't necessarily but it was the context of what you were doing, and who you were meeting and how you got there. In a way they were more scary, they weren't protest songs but protest behaviour... it's what the state really really fears, it's people meeting up, forming groups, then those people form bigger groups, it's something you can't really control',
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