"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.

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

In the 1980s, a drummer is abandoned by his band just before they become rock superstars. Twenty yea...
Equal parts film, conversation, and social experiment, this interactive documentary uses footage sho...

The individual journeys of the four members of the band, as they move through the music scene of the...

The film looks at men and women of color in the U.S. Merchant Marine from 1938-1975. Through chronic...

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

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

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

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

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

Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a wa...

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

Guy Debord's analysis of a consumer society.

Two brothers reflect on their chaotic journey to stardom, as part of the legendary punk rock bands T...

Deng Xiaoping's economic and political opening in China. Margaret Thatcher's extreme economic measur...

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

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

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

Down the road from Woodstock in the early 1970s, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp ...