FREE TO ROCK is a documentary film directed by 4-time Emmy winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. Rock & Roll spread like an uncontrollable virus across Eastern Europe despite Communist attempts to outlaw it. Thousands of underground bands and millions of young fans who yearned for Western freedoms and embraced this music as the Sound of Freedom, helped fuel the nonviolent implosion of the Soviet regime. Free to Rock features Presidents, diplomats, spies and rock stars from the West and the Soviet Union who reveal how Rock & Roll music was a contributing factor in ending the Cold War.
When you speak, you speak to the mind, but when you play Rock ’n’ Roll music, you play to the heart. Rock ’n’ Roll music became a part of my diplomatic work. You can talk big politics all day, but rock breaks stuff down. Rock ’n’ Roll music was not soft. This film is a testament to the fact that it is as hard as nuclear weapons. - Hungarian Ambassador Andras Simonyi
PETE ANDERSON (1945 - 2016)
In MemoriamPete Anderson, who helped pioneer Soviet and Latvian Rock & Roll, while inspiring his country’s independence movement, has passed away after a three-year hard-fought battle with cancer.
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Free to Rock, beyond telling the unheard story of the upheaval and real power of Soviet rock music, carries larger implications for today. Perhaps presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle could learn a thing or two from Free to Rock about how culture, ideology, and music are some of the most powerful weapons that one can wield. - Jackson Sinnenberg - On Tap Magazine