FOLK FILM CLUB

OffBeat is a folk film club started by the artist and designer Mike Hankin and filmmaker Rita Conry. We screen archive documentaries about British Culture and music in the 20th Century. Inspired by the folk clubs of the 1960s and 1970s, we host evenings of talks, curated music and film which show often overlooked stories of what makes these islands and their inhabitants so weird and wonderful.

A.L. Lloyd, The Watersons and Louis Killen would perform to crowds packed into trades halls and rooms in pubs and sing stories about sailors, or young maidens from hundreds of years before but which still resonated with 20th Century audiences. By collecting and sharing them, they kept them alive. We found these same stories in films. These were a record of vernacular culture that survived in distant corners of onlines archives but weren’t being shared. And, when we did share them, we found that these stories, about working people from the 20th Century, still resonated with audiences in the 2020s.