FREE TO ROCK: HOW ROCK & ROLL HELPED END THE COLD WAR Screening at The St. Louis Science Center May 4th

Culture Shock: A Film Series presents its first in a traveling film series with the documentary FREE TO ROCK screening Saturday May 4th at 7pm at the Saint Louis Science Center’s OMNIMAX Theater (5050 Oakland Ave.) Admission is $7. Concessions will be available to purchase. A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE This is a benefit for
Helping Kids Together (http://www.helpingkidstogether.com/)

FREE TO ROCK is a 60 minute documentary film directed by 4 time Emmy winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. Ten years in the making, the film explores the soft power of Rock & Roll to affect social change behind the Iron Curtain between the years 1955 and 1991, and how it contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and to ending the Cold War. Rock & Roll sounded the “chimes of freedom” in the hearts and minds of Iron Curtain youth. Inspiring its youth to demand freedom to listen, play and record rock music, to enjoy basic human rights and freedom from oppressive communist rule. The story follows the key political, musical and activist players in this real-life drama as the KGB cracked down hard with arrests, beatings, death threats and imprisonment. Thousands of underground rock bands with millions of passionate supporters inspire and fuel independence movements that eventually cause the Soviet communist system to implode without blood shed or civil war. Interviews and performance subjects include: Presidents Carter, Gorbachev and Vike-Freiberga, NATO Deputy Secretary General Vershbow, KGB General Kalugin, diplomats, historians and journalists, along with Elvis Presley, Beatles, Billy Joel, Metallica, Scorpions, Beach Boys, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the WALL in Berlin concert; plus the Iron Curtain rockers who braved the long struggle with the Kremlin and KGB. The film is produced in collaboration with the Grammy Museum, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Stas Namin Center of Moscow, with support from the U.S. Government’s National Endowment of the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, both US Government arts agencies.

“Culture Shock” is the name of a film series here in St. Louis that is the cornerstone project of a social enterprise that is an ongoing source of support for Helping Kids Together (http://www.helpingkidstogether.com/) a St. Louis based social enterprise dedicated to building cultural diversity and social awareness among young people through the arts and active living.

The films featured for “Culture Shock” demonstrate an artistic representation of culture shock materialized through mixed genre and budgets spanning music, film and theater. Through ‘A Film Series’ working relationship with Schlafly Bottleworks, they seek to provide film lovers with an offbeat mix of dinner and a movie opportunities.