"Jolly Roger" could mean Roger Schawinski. But by definition, a "Jolly Roger" is the classic black pirate flag with skull and crossbones. This documentary tells the unvarnished story of the Swiss radio pirates who emerged in the 1970s. The focus is on Radio 24 in its wild years, when Schawinski's team broadcast from Italy, with the strongest FM station in the world at the time, straight down from Pizzo Groppera, 130 kilometers all the way to the Zurich area. Supported by numerous original documents from private filmmakers and from the SRG archives, the viewer relives the absurd radio war between David and Goliath that lasted almost four years, 24 years after this war between the radio pirates and the state power began on November 13, 1979. The many known and unknown fighters, who rallied behind their Radio Winkelried Schawinski in 1979 to help usher Switzerland into a new media age, remember the good and bad times, the demonstrations and the numerous threatened and actual closures.

When the mastermind behind New York's infamous Studio 54 disco plucks young Shane from the sea of fa...

Pouvoir Oublier is a political documentary first constructed from the words of the speakers whose li...

Despite its Afro-American origins, the history of disco music, the soundtrack of the seventies, woul...

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how ...

In the 1980s, a drummer is abandoned by his band just before they become rock superstars. Twenty yea...

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaher...

Brazilian singer Maria Bethania has a 40-year singing career. A documentary shows her concerts and f...

Mark Hunter, a lonely high school student, uses his shortwave radio to moonlight as the popular pira...

The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palesti...

In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and ...

In 1978, a Kiss concert was an epoch-making event. For the four teen fans in Detroit Rock City getti...

Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and...

In this feature-length documentary, six teenage girls, aged 14 to 16, agree to open up and have thei...

Guy Debord's analysis of a consumer society.

A fine documentary that details the sordid life of 1970s pornographic actor John Holmes, from the st...

An observational documentary which looks at Sydney’s first community Aboriginal radio station, 88.9 ...

A roller-coaster ride through the history of American exploitation films, ranging from Roger Corman'...

Watching My Name Go By is a 1976 BBC documentary on the birth of graffiti in New York City, and the ...

A Dutch documentary about the history of the anarchist punk band Crass. The film features archival f...

On the eve of the publication of a biography of Claude Jutra, one of the most famous and celebrated ...