Social & External
They called it young black kids’ punk rock - a genre that radio stations wouldn’t play and records that labels refused to sell. But grime would not be stopped. With machine-gun lyrics that shred the eardrums and syncopated electronics that pound the chest like a sledgehammer, grime was a product of social unrest, urban culture and disenfranchised youth colliding in early 2000s UK. It didn’t just rouse a grassroots audience, however. Today, grime is surging in popularity all over the globe and widely influencing the music charts. This is the story of the genre’s roots.
In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.
Rapper Rodney P. presents the story of Britain's second wave of pirate radio DJs. In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations appeared broadcasting from London tower blocks.
From hooliganism and violence through to the ecstasy and the rise of rave culture, Andy Swallow, co-founder of West Ham's ICF and later Centreforce 883, opens up about his life for the very first time.
The '60s. Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, two amateur radio enthusiasts, listened to sound from space with home-built equipment in their hometown of Turin. But one night, they recorded something quite different from the usual static that would change their lives forever...
"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.
Pirate radio stations are unprecedentedly popular, even in the age of the internet and Spotify. What does this music say about identity, about our desire for stability in a changing world?
A loving portrait of a pirate radio stations, which is run by the rural population with plenty of passion and talent in the face of opposition from the authorities.
Mark Hunter, a lonely high school student, uses his shortwave radio to moonlight as the popular pirate DJ "Hard Harry." When his show gets blamed for a teen committing suicide, the students clash with high school faculty and the authorities.
Peppino Impastato is a quick-witted lad growing up in 1970s Sicily. Despite hailing from a family with Mafia ties and living just one hundred steps from the house of local boss Tano Badalamenti, Peppino decides to expose the Mafia by using a pirate radio station to broadcast his political pronouncements in the form of ironic humour.
In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.
Two disc jockeys have a friend's murder to solve in the fringe-group melting pot of 1977 London.
Tommy and Mike operate a famous pirate radio station, Germany's most listened-to radio station. The police and the operators of the Bavarian Broadcast Company try to stop their illegal broadcast.
At the stroke of midnight, pirate radio host Devlin Deeds taunts the airwaves with tethering stories of murder, madness, and the macabre in small town New England.
A pirate radio, the girl next door, and a test of friendship.
April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, an independent radio station closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, begins to tell its story, the story of a group of friends—especially troubled Freccia's—and a period of their youth in their small hometown.
Bologna, 1976. The paths of two aimless young friends intertwine with those of Radio Alice, a pirate radio politically aligned with the leftist student movement.
Sally runs a mobile "pirate" radio station--which she operates from her van--where, in her sexy and sultry voice, she encourages her listeners (mostly teenagers) to use the music she plays "to ball by". She also takes calls from her listeners and even offers herself as a prize in a contest. Her show is so popular it winds up "turning on" large numbers of the local population. The authorities, of course, can't allow that to happen, so they send out the cops to find her and shut her down.
