Notes

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dvd1: burned as NTSC
dvd2: original avi file

Storyville - How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin

Sunday, 6th September 2009
8pm to 9pm
BBC4

In August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called the Beatles. He went on to arrange their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester, and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world.

Twenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how the Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life. The Soviet authorities were alarmed by the seditious potential of rock and roll, with the Beatles a special target and denounced as 'bugs' in official papers. Their smuggled records were destroyed and their music was banned, but the myth blossomed as bootlegs and photos were covertly traded and even rented amongst fans.

Soon there were thousands of rock bands across the USSR, trying to make music with crude home-made guitars. Speakers on lampposts installed to broadcast propaganda were grabbed by rock hopefuls, while reports that an electric pickup could be cannibalised from a telephone led to phone boxes being raided and disabled. Millions of young people fell in love with the Beatles and the culture of the Cold War enemy, and defected emotionally from the Soviet system. The Beatles prepared the cultural way for the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately helped to wash away the foundations of that system.


=== File Information ===
File Name: Storyville - How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin.avi
Duration: 00:58:54 (88,350 fr)
File Size: 699 MB (or 716,718 KB or 733,919,232 bytes) bytes

=== Video Information ===
Video Codec Name: XviD
Video Bitrate: 1518 kb/s
Bits / Pixel: 0.297 bits/pixel
Resolution: 608x336 (1.81:1) [=38:21]

=== Audio Information ===
Audio Codec: 0x0055(MP3) ID'd as MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 135 kb/s (67/ch, stereo) VBR LAME3.90
Type Documentary / Educational
Source PDTV
Codec XviD
Last Update 2009-09-10 12:34:12 (1:48 ago)
Size 699.92 MB (733,919,232 bytes)