In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.

"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.

Frustrated by commercial radio in the ’90s, a music-loving legal secretary builds one from scratch and runs it out of her LA apartment.

They called it young black kids’ punk rock - a genre that radio stations wouldn’t play and records that labels refused to sell. But grime would not be stopped. With machine-gun lyrics that shred the eardrums and syncopated electronics that pound the chest like a sledgehammer, grime was a product of social unrest, urban culture and disenfranchised youth colliding in early 2000s UK. It didn’t just rouse a grassroots audience, however. Today, grime is surging in popularity all over the globe and widely influencing the music charts. This is the story of the genre’s roots.

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From hooliganism and violence through to the ecstasy and the rise of rave culture, Andy Swallow, co-founder of West Ham's ICF and later Centreforce 883, opens up about his life for the very first time.

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The '60s. Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, two amateur radio enthusiasts, listened to sound from space with home-built equipment in their hometown of Turin. But one night, they recorded something quite different from the usual static that would change their lives forever...

A loving portrait of a pirate radio stations, which is run by the rural population with plenty of passion and talent in the face of opposition from the authorities.

Rapper Rodney P. presents the story of Britain's second wave of pirate radio DJs. In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations appeared broadcasting from London tower blocks.

Mimmo Villari is 29 years old in 1975, lives in Calabria, has a dusty guitar in the attic and the sacred fire of music that once burned his stomach is now turning into embers. In that period the first experiences of pirate radio arose in Italy. Mimmo is thrilled by the rumors about it and wastes no time: he builds himself an FM transmitter and thus sets up Radio Perla del Tirreno, the first pirate radio station in Bagnara Calabra. The voices of the radio reflect on politics, philosophy, civic education, creating a discourse that is the portrait of a society and an era.

Pirate radio stations are unprecedentedly popular, even in the age of the internet and Spotify. What does this music say about identity, about our desire for stability in a changing world?