*** followed by a talk with Mark Angelo Harrison & Violet
United Kingdom, late 1980s. The boom of electronic dance music and the rise of neoliberalism give birth to a generation searching for community in an increasingly individualistic society. It is this setting that Free Party: A Folk History recalls - a visceral, first-person account of the early free parties and their evolution, from the Spiral Tribe collective to the Glastonbury Festival, culminating in the historic illegal rave at Castlemorton in 1992 - the largest ever, which led to a radical shift in legislation with the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. This is the story of the birth of one of the biggest countercultural movements of the 20th century, whose echoes can still be felt in today’s aesthetics and ways of life.
*** after the screening, we welcome Mark Angelo Harrison, founding member of the Spiral Tribe collective and author of “A Darker Electricity: The origins of the Spiral Tribe sound system" and Violet, DJ and an active force in the current Lisbon scene, for a panel discussion aiming to deepen some of the themes explored in the movie and to reflect on the current Portuguese scene.