Documentary film Free to Rock explores the powerful and lasting impact music — Rock & Roll in particular — has on social movements. Directed by Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, the 60-minute film will be screened Nov. 30 at the University of Cincinnati’s MainStreet Cinema. A Q&A session will follow with Cincinnati native Doug Yeager, a writer, researcher and producer for the film.
The screening is Yeager’s first return to his hometown in a little over 40 years. He began his career as a concert promoter and entertainment producer in Cincinnati after attending UC.
For Yeager and Nick Binkley (another producer on the film), Free to Rock has been a labor of love for more than a decade. The duo’s first encounter dates back to 1990s San Francisco. It was at this time, just after the Post-Soviet aliyah — in which former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev allowed Jewish citizens to leave the USSR and immigrate to Israel — that Binkley sheltered refugees who ended up in San Francisco instead of Israel. Many of the refugees were underground musicians and they shared their stories — tales of constant fear and sometimes torture — with Binkley. In turn, he started to share their stories with others who would listen.
“He thought that Rock music was one of the most impactful forces in ending the USSR,” Yeager says.
At that time, the Soviet Union (which collapsed in ‘91) was so closed off from other cultures that the government would jam radio stations to prevent music and propaganda from getting in, Yeager says. One country managed to get around those attempts, however. According to Yeager, in Latvia, citizens were close enough to other signals that they could fix their radios to pick up Western stations.
“They rebelled against the Soviet Union through Rock music,” Yeager asserts.
Yeager and Binkley’s first interview for the film took place in Latvia in 2005. It was with an underground Rock musician who told Yeager and Binkley of how he was tortured by the Kremlin and threatened with his family’s death.
More than just a compelling historical story, the subject of the documentary appealed to all of Yeager’s passions in life, which helped fuel his involvement in the project for the next decade. Yeager, who studied International Relations at UC (a degree he finished at Aix-Marseille University in France), also has participated in social movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.
“In my life and career, I have always been involved in social activist movements and human rights movements,” he says. “To me, the story (in Free to Rock) fused international politics, social activism and music together. You couldn’t separate them.”
Yeager says interviews with a pair of prominent Cold War-era figures — former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev — were a big part of the reason why the film took so long to complete. He describes the process of making the documentary as like building upon a foundation. Each interview helped the production team build a pyramid of sources that eventually lent enough credibility to gain access to important figures like Carter, Gorbachev and even Rock stars like The Beach Boys and Billy Joel.
Though the film focuses on the cultural and historical impact that Rock & Roll had on the world, Yeager knows that’s not the only draw for audiences of the film.
“Half of the people will come just because Metallica and Billy Joel are in the film,” Yeager admits. “But I’m hoping that it will make people think a little more deeply about the power of music and culture and what it can do to transform a society. And how it can affect change in totalitarian societies.
“It’s amazing how music can galvanize people and connect them. It’s a power that’s hard to explain.”
Free to Rock will be screened Nov. 30 at 12:15 p.m. in the University of Cincinnati’s MainStreet Cinema in Tangeman University Center, followed by a Q&A session with Doug Yeager. More info: uc.edu/mainstreet.
This article appears in Nov 21-28, 2018.