FREE TO ROCK

How Rock and Roll Helped End the Cold War

Directed by 4 time EMMY Award Winning Filmmaker Jim Brown In Partnership with The GRAMMY Museum Foundation

FREE TO ROCK is a 70 minute documentary film, being produced in collaboration with the Grammy Museum, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Stas Namin Center of , with support from the U.S. Government’s National Endowment of the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts. Nine years in the making, the film analyzes how the American Metallica in Moscow, 1991 cultural innovation of Rock and Roll music contributed to the end of the Cold War.

INTERVIEWS AND PERFORMANCES INCLUDE: Presidents Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin and Latvian President Vike-Freiberga; KGB General Oleg Kalugin, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye; NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow; Ambassadors Andras Simonyi and Ojars Kalnins; plus Elvis Presley; Beach Boys, Beatles, Dean Reed, Rolling Stones, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Scorpions, The Wall – Live in Berlin, Metallica, Stas Namin, Pits “Pete” Anderson, Boris Grebenshikov, Andrey Makarevich, Valery Saifudinov, Yuri Schevchuk, Plastic People of the Universe, Doc McGhee, and Mark Ross, who produced one of the largest free rock concerts in history – outside Moscow in 1991.

• Premier at LA/Live sponsored by The Grammy Foundation • Theatrical Release & International Television Distribution • ‘Greatest Rock Music Hits’ Soundtrack Album • Companion Book and DVD • Website and Applications • Museum Exhibitions and Concerts “The Tanks Roll Out and the Stones Roll In” – President Vaclav Havel and Mick Jagger, Prague , 1990 THE STORY: FREE TO ROCK explores how American rock & roll music spread like a virus across the Iron Curtain in the last half of the 20th century.

The film follows this story, and its key players, as rock & roll was pumped into the by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. This inspired thousands of underground rock bands and their tens of millions of passionate supporters. Their enthusiasm for rock & roll became a youth movement that openly defied the Communist government. Decade after decade, the government was forced to yield The Berlin Wall 1989 to their demands.

During Glasnost, President Gorbachev rolled back the controls on rock & roll, and rock music created cracks in the totalitarian system -- from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989… to the Moscow Music Peace Festival…to the Singing Revolution in the Baltic States… and culminating with one of the largest rock concerts in history at Moscow’s Tushino Airfield in 1991. The machine came to a halt. Cultural diplomacy played as much of a role as the trillions of dollars spent on weapons to bring an end to the totalitarian Soviet Empire Stas Namin with , and the Cold War. The film shows that today, rock music is still an Moscow Music Peace Festival effective soft power force in combatting dictatorial regimes throughout the world. 1989

FREE TO ROCK is guided by a “blue ribbon” panel of scholars, experts and humanities advisors from the United States and former nations from behind the Iron Curtain. These include Bill Ivey, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and founding director of the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University; Robert Santelli, Executive Director of the Grammy Museum and author of 12 books on Rock and Roll; Dr. Timothy Ryback, author of Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; Ambassador Andras Simonyi, former Hungarian Ambassador to the United States, former rock guitarist, former Chairman of Korda Film Studios, current Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington; Dr. Mark LeVine, Department of History at University of California Irvine, frequent news analyst, rock guitarist and author of Heavy Metal Islam; Ambassador Ojar Kalnins, Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee and Member of Latvian Parliament, professional rock lyricist; Dr. Nils Muiznieks, former Latvian Cabinet Minister, Soviet specialist at University of Latvia; Terry Stewart, former President and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and the late Dr. Gregory Guroff, President of the Foundation for International Arts and Education, and a former cultural attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Directed and Written by Jim Brown

Executive Producers Nick Binkley, Doug Yeager, Stas Namin, John Beug and Bill Ivey

Produced by Jim Brown, Doug Yeager, Nick Binkley

Contact Heather Smith at JIM BROWN PRODUCTIONS (212) 505-0138 [email protected]