Free to Rock

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 a virus across the Soviet Union despite Communist attempts to outlaw it. Thousands of underground bands and millions of young fans who yearned for Western freedoms 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.

This 10-year production features interviews and performances including: Presidents Carter, Gorbachev and Latvian President Vike-Freiberga, former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, former NATO Deputary Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, along with Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Elton John, Billy Joel, Scorpions, Cyndi Lauper (The Wall -Live in Berlin), Metallica, Stas Namin, Pits “Pete” Anderson, Boris Grebenshikov, Andrey Makarevich, Valery Saifudinov, Yuri Schevchuk, and more.

This Enhanced Edition includes not only the Full 60 Minute Feature Film on one disc, but also a Bonus 120 Minute Disc with Outtakes & Original Stories Behind the Making of the film. The Bonus Disc is entitled “Rockin’ The Kremlin and includes an interesting collection of in-depth interviews and several new songs. This Bonus Disc features FREE TO ROCK producers Nick Binkley, Doug Yeager and Soviet Rock Pioneer, Valery Saifudinov being interviewed about the origins and
the making of the film. It features additional narrative on the stories touched on in the film about Valery Saifudinov, Pete Anderson, Hungarian Ambassador Simonyi, and the Plastic People of the Universe; plus new stories about the exiled German band Klaus Renft Combo, the Soviet rock guitarist Serge Diujikov, the Soviet rock journalist Artemy Troitsky, the imprisoned Soviet bootlegger Juris Lapinskis, the KGB prison and dungeons in Latvia, and the Soviet pop-rock star Vyacheslav Malezhik, and his collaboration with FREE TO ROCK producer Nick Binkley in writing, recording and performing in Russia their East/West anthem “Novi Mir.”