2016's tasty crop of music documentaries includes Free To Rock, a Kiefer Sutherland-narrated exploration of how "American rock 'n' roll spread like an uncontrollable virus across the Iron Curtain in the last half of the 20th century.
"The film follows this story, and its key players, as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America began pumping rock & roll into Eastern Europe and the USSR," the sales pitch continues. "This music inspired thousands of underground rock bands and their tens of millions of passionate supporters who embraced it as the 'sound of freedom.' Their enthusiasm for rock & roll sparked a revolutionary youth movement that openly defied the Communist government. And, decade after decade, as the movement grew, the government was continually forced to yield to their demands for more freedom.
"During Glasnost, President Gorbachev rolled back the controls on rock & roll; and the force of music ripped opened cracks in the totalitarian system - from the Moscow Music Peace Festival to the Singing Revolution in the Baltic State to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – 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 and the Cold War. The film shows that today, rock music is still an effective soft power force in combatting dictatorial regimes throughout the world."
The work of four-time Emmy-winning filmmaker Jim Brown, it includes contributions from Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Billy Joel, Mike Love and some of the Soviet musicians who were kicking at the system from within.

Free to Rock Trailer from Jim Brown Productions on Vimeo.