35000 Watts: The Story of College Radio

The students behind the mic and the bands they made famous tell the story of the youth and music culture that originated, and later flourished, on the airwaves of American colleges and universities, establishing a new generational voice and a new path to success for many alumni and artists.

2024-07-09 | en

Sex and Broadcasting

SEX AND BROADCASTING is a feature length documentary about New Jersey's WFMU, the world's strangest and most unique radio station, and one man's attempt to keep it alive in the face of recession, the persistent threat of commercial media, and the challenges that come with keeping a rebellious group of outsiders together.

2014-11-15 | en

Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS 102.3 FM

Built out of “a pile of radio junk,” Bethesda, Maryland’s WHFS was a music fan’s dream of a radio station: the place on the dial to hear music listeners loved and new tunes they soon would, all with an anything-goes mentality and an ear for the sounds of social change. This doc pays loving tribute to free-form radio and WHFS’s influence over FM stations across the US from the 1960s to the 1980s. All good things come to an end, and so did the disc-jockey-driven format that WHFS pioneered and made successful, but its legacy lives on. The station’s DJs relate its history with passion in this film that captures the tenor of an era, abetted by reminiscences of performers including Emmylou Harris, Taj Mahal, Jesse Colin Young, and others whose music found its way to ears and minds eager for something more than the same old Top 40 programming.

2023-10-13 | en

Kick Out the Jams: The Story of XFM

Titled after the first-ever song to play on their airwaves, Kick Out the Jams follows the development of XFM from its rebellious pirate radio roots in the early 90’s, through to its official FM radio launch in 1997 as a major platform for launching alternative talent into the mainstream. The doc deep-dives into the struggles and influence of the station which gave rise to the likes of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, whose global hits The Office and The Ricky Gervais Show were originally developed while working at the radio station.

2022-08-31 | en

Little Pond in Main Street

Street vendors in Korea are almost like a national institution, they are so widespread and relied upon. In Little Pond in Main Street a group of vendors band together to create a community radio station but come into conflict with other groups, as well as the government trying to shut them down.

2014-10-04 | ko

Annie Nightingale: Bird on the Wireless

Radio 1's longest-serving broadcaster Annie Nightingale takes us on a counter-cultural journey through the events, people and sounds that have inspired her illustrious career.

2011-06-03 | en

Yellow Caesar

Using edited archive footage, mockery is made of Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini.

1941-05-24 | en

When Moyles Met the Radio 1 Breakfast DJs

DJ Chris Moyles looks at how the Radio 1 Breakfast Show has reflected life in Britain over the past 40 years, as he meets his predecessors in the early morning slot.

2010-05-09 | en

L' Aventure de la TSF

2010-06-01 | fr

War of the Worlds

An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.

2013-10-29 | en

Nuxalk Radio

A day in the life of 91.1, Nuxalk Radio, a radio station built to help keep the Nuxalk language alive while broadcasting the laws of the lands and waters.

2020-06-18 | en

88.9 Radio Redfern

An observational documentary which looks at Sydney’s first community Aboriginal radio station, 88.9 Radio Redfern. Set against a backdrop of contemporary Aboriginal music, 88.9 Radio Redfern offers a special and rare exploration of the people, attitudes and philosophies behind the lead up to a different type of celebration of Australia’s Bicentennial Year. Throughout 1988, 88.9 Radio Redfern became an important focal point for communication and solidarity within the Aboriginal community. The film reveals how urban blacks are adapting social structures such as the mass media to serve their needs.

1989-09-20 | en

Talking Dreams

In a village in West Africa where dreams play a key role, the hosts of local radio interpret the oniric visions of their listeners. The language of dreams is spoken here. The limits between the real and the fantastic blur, and time is suspended.

2020-04-17 | it

29 years of impunity. The phenomenon of Father Tadeusz

A monk who got away with everything. Although much of his behavior aroused public outrage, or at least controversy, he never suffered any real consequences for it.

2021-01-11 | pl

Jolly Roger

"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.

2003-11-20 | de

A Maldita

In March 1982, Rádio Fluminense FM, known as MALDITA, airs in Niterói, which with irreverence, boldness and creativity in programming, breaks with the standardized foreign music markets and begins the so-called Rock 80 generation.

2007-09-19 | pt

Radio Free Newport: The True Story of WNOP

Imagine an AM Radio Station with a dawn to dusk license that played nothing but jazz and comedy records. Did I mention it FLOATED in the Ohio River and changed the culture of a Community? The history of Cincinnati Jazz is long, wide, diverse and in the case of WNOP sometimes beyond belief. Saxophonist turned filmmaker Christopher Braig's second Film will focus on the people, music, and cities that kept "The Jazz Ark" sailing for 42 years from 1968 to 2000.

2019-10-05 | en

We Want The Airwaves: The WFNX Story

After 30 years as Boston's fiercely independent Alternative music station, WFNX announces that it is being sold to Clear Channel Communications, and news of the sale rattles generations of music fans who had grown to believe that WFNX would always exist at 101.7 on their FM dial. As the station counts down its last sixty days on the air, current and former WFNX employees reminisce about the station's rich history and reflect on what the sale of this perennial David in a land of radio Goliaths says about the changing ways we relate to music and media.

2013-10-13 | en

Good Morning Austria

A working day in Austria, 2004. Nine modern working-class heroes are engaged in their daily struggle of survival, accompanied, motivated and influenced by the country’s most popular radio station.

2007-01-01 | de

Générations Hip Hop

Musical compilation of live performances by French hip-hop artists.

2003-10-20 | fr