Sex and Broadcasting is a human, and humorous, look at New Jersey’s WFMU, a radio station that refuses any programming boundaries. Most of its disc jockeys are unpaid volunteers, working for their love of surprising, spontaneous radio. They play everything from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to every form of rock and roll, experimental music, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, hand-cranked wax cylinders, gospel, Inuit marching bands, R&B, C&W, radio improvisations, spoken-word collages, and throat singers of the Lower East Side. Their captain is station manager Ken Freedman, who has spent the past three decades keeping WFMU alive, independent, and one of a kind.
The film weaves personal stories of WFMU’s eccentric DJs with an exploration of the 21st-century media landscape that has made the station such a rarity. Can WFMU stay on the air and stay true to its independent spirit?
Sex and Broadcasting explores the past and present of this essential, weird, and utterly unique American institution while telling the gripping, yet comical, story of its fight for survival.
directed by: Tim K. Smith
starring: Ken Freedman, Tom Scharpling, Matt Groening, Adam Horovitz, Patton Oswalt, Bradford Cox, Lee Ranaldo
2014 / 78 min / 1.78:1 / English Dolby Digital 2.0
Blu-ray info:
- Region Free
- Brian Turner gives a tour of the WFMU record library
- At Home with WFMU DJ’s
- Alternative Film Open
- English SDH subtitles
Booklet info:
- Essay Director Tim K. Smith,
- ESSAY BY Dave the Spazz,
- ”HOW I GOT HERE, WHY I STAYED” ESSAY BY Irwin Chusid,
- ”THE GENESIS OF SEX AND BROADCASTING” ESSAY BY Lorenzo W. Milam
