Part of the 2024 Bristol Radical Film Festival.

Open Country is a journey into the roots of American Country music, reclaiming it as the creative musical expression of working people of all colours. 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 defence of the right of workers, poor farmers, and the dispossessed to live their lives in dignity.

This film features interviews with Billy Bragg, Mat Callahan, Keith Cary, Davey D, Ryan Davidson, Hazel Dickens, Hilary Dirlam, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Bairbre Flood, Archie Green, Gerald Haslam, Toshio Hirano, Roger Knox, Jon Langford, Hannah Mayree, Morgan McDow, George Metesky, Yvonne Moore, Utah Phillips and Pete Seeger.

The evening will be opened by a performance from local country stars Joe and The Temperance Two who were brought together through a love of the fiddle tunes and string band music of Appalachia  - Old time fiddling, driving guitar and frailing banjo to keep you dancing on the porch.

Check out the rest of our screenings on headfirst and here: https://cubecinema.com