When we started The OffBeat Folk Film Club three years ago, we didn’t have very high expectations. The idea was to screen films about folk music and culture and invite a small handful of friends and family along to a screening. We showed two: Oss Oss Wee Oss! (1953) and Travelling for a Living (1966), a black-and-white documentary following the folk group The Watersons as they travel by bus from their shared home in Hull to perform in folk clubs and pubs across the country. We wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the folk clubs they were playing in, so we gave a short introduction before each film, included an intermission between them (even though their combined runtime is well under an hour), and chose to hold the screening at an old working men’s club, The Walthamstow Trades Hall. Despite our expectations and the fact the event looked practically empty with so few friends spread out across such a large dance floor, it was a success. In fact, it worked really well.
These obscure documentaries made in far-off parts of Britain some 60 or 70 years ago, held the audience in a way we couldn’t have predicted. Even though few, if any, had heard of the Padstow May Day celebration or the Obby Oss at its centre, and even if no one had listened to The Watersons before, they felt a connection. The films resonated with them. They painted a portrait of Britain that was familiar but slightly out of reach. The films showed England not in a broad or nationalistic sense but through intimate, human stories that captured the essence of life on these islands. At a time when the shambles of post-Brexit, Conservative rule had reached a crescendo, the films presented an image of Britain that was historical but not nostalgic, patriotic but without the baggage of politics. They celebrated a joyful and eccentric culture of people who had little and made much of it, a message that felt especially poignant amid a cost-of-living crisis where many who were watching felt they had less and less. They created a feeling that was familiar and quintessentially British but also alien and out of reach.
For us, this feeling, and the culture of everyday people was a far more relevant and compelling embodiment of ‘folk’ than the dances and songs shown in the films. We saw a parallel between then and now and wanted to use film to talk about it. Just as The Watersons used 19th-century ballads to articulate the struggles of the 1960s, we were using TV films, the storytelling medium of the 20th century, to communicate with a struggling, disaffected and disconnected contemporary audience. We wanted to show a progressive, depoliticised, and kinder vision of British identity, one that people could, dare we say it, feel proud of. And there was no shortage of films in the archives that did just that. Gentle television documentaries about coal miners and hill sheep farmers. About lighthouse keepers and wassailers. About the small, idiosyncratic traditions that make these islands at the edge of the earth so special and unique.
Since that first event, we have hosted screenings in Walthamstow every other month, as well as at venues across London in between. What began as a small gathering of friends has grown into a feature of the landscape of the folk revival movement. We’ve managed to carve out a niche and stand out by being perhaps less preoccupied with tradition and the occult as we are with the innate character of the people of Britain. As our following has grown, we’ve looked harder at OffBeat’s aims and what we’re really about. What we originally saw as a series of screenings has evolved into something more significant. An exploration of what it means to document and preserve folk culture in a modern age.
At its heart, OffBeat is a project showcasing documentaries, and for a long time, we’ve relied on the Regional Archives to preserve, restore, digitise, and make available to us television films from the 1950s to the 1980s. These films document vanishing traditions, heritage crafts, rituals, and dances that, if not already extinct, are clinging on for survival. But recently, we’ve come to realise that the medium we set out to celebrate is itself endangered. Documentary filmmaking is now so competitive that, unless serialised or presented by a celebrity, it might struggle to gain traction. Gentle, slow-moving films which once thrived on the BBC and regional broadcasters are now homeless. These films, without narration or presentation, capture a sense of place rather than follow the most compelling narrative structure. There are very few platforms where this type of filmmaking is properly showcased and celebrated. We wanted to do what we could to keep it alive.
And so, we started The OffBeat Folk Film Festival, the first festival dedicated exclusively to the lived experiences of everyday people in the British Isles. The first National Folk Film Festival.
Just as with our first screening, we had no idea what to expect. But the response and reception has been overwhelming. We were inundated with submissions and struggled to select just 50 films that best showcase Britain at its weirdest and most wonderful. The films featured in the 2025 OffBeat Folk Film Festival range from the story of a man training to become a town crier to a woman building a flying machine. There are films about sheep invading villages, dry stone wall builders, and Welsh dolmens. There’s a documentary about East London’s infamous pickled egg-eating competition, and, of course, a film about the Padstow Obby Oss. Over nine events, spread across a week in May, we’ll tell the story of Britain, its folk and the culture of everyday people from every angle. This festival will be a true celebration of folk culture today. And what better way to celebrate than with an awards ceremony followed by the incredible Daisy Rickman performing a live gig at The Mildmay Club? We hope that this festival will support our aim not only to showcase films but also to create a space where conversations about folk culture, past and present, can grow.
We’ve loved watching every single film submitted and agonised over narrowing them down to the 50 that made the cut. We truly believe this programme represents the very best of folk film. Thank you to everyone who submitted. We couldn’t have done it without you.
That’s all folk.
Mike & Rita