Open Country is a journey into the roots of American Country music, reclaiming it as the creative musical expression of working people of all colors. Through archival clips, contemporary interviews, performances, and animated graphics, Open Country repositions country music into its rightful place as a people’s music.
Although one wouldn’t realise it from listening to today’s pop Country-Western radio stations, country music has been anything but a rightwing soundtrack. To the contrary, the roots of Country and Western lie firmly in classic American traditions of resistance to capital, freedom from government interference, and in defense of the right of workers, poor farmers, and the dispossessed to live their lives in dignity.
This event is part of the Bristol Radical Film Festival 2024.
Festival passes available via Headfirst.

The evening will commence with a set from local fiddlers and pluckers Joe and The Temperance Two. The trio were brought together through a love of the fiddle tunes and string band music of Appalachia. Musicians Joe Mansfield (fiddle) and Kai Carter (guitars) were joined in 2021 by Yannick Allerton (a fresh ‘lock down’ adopter of claw-hammer banjo).

Entry requirements: 16+ — Read more — Read less