Free Party: A Folk History (2023)

British documentary chronicling the free party movement in the 1990s and its origins

The documentary traces the social and political events leading up to the legendary and largest ever illegal rave, Castlemorton, in 1992, as well as the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield, when 1500 police officers set upon 600 new age travellers with truncheons to prevent them setting up the Stonehenge Free Festival. Found footage and interviews situates the radical, counter-cultural free party movement within the final years of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, which saw the Public Order Act 1986 and crackdowns thereafter.