Dwelling on the fringes of entertainment media leads independent filmmakers in pursuit of some innovative subjects.

For a greater part of their adult lives, independent documentary filmmakers Mary Jones and Jeff Pearson have found creative underground venues in public access television and, as expressed by the title of their recent documentary, in Pirate Radio USA. Pearson credits a great deal of the film’s narrative style and quirky visual elements to years of trial and error in television.

The film begins in the corner of a dilapidated garage in Seattle, Washington and expands to cover our rights as American citizens. Says Pearson, “I originally thought this would be a film about radio, but it turned into a discussion of our basic freedoms.”

According to the film, the concept of pirate radio production is nothing new, and until government regulation of the airwaves in the early days of radio’s emerging commercial validity, homemade radio broadcasters were as plentiful as neon lights in Las Vegas. What few people realize is that low-frequency broadcasting sometimes transmits to radiuses counted in city blocks. Such transmissions are now, very often, very illegal.

Shooting for Pirate Radio USA began in 1998 and gradually evolved into a puzzle whose pieces didn’t all turn up until late 2005. Initially, Pearson wanted to make a film solely about those dangerous and sexy alternative voices he heard resonating within pirate radio’s pocket universe. Before long, the film’s vision began to expand into what Pearson ultimately saw as the rise of the current “American Police State” and its hand in the centralization of the media. “What is never really stated in the film is that our message is not about left versus right, it’s not about right versus wrong, it’s really about Big Versus Small…and just how expansive is our human experience.”

Pearson admits that it is almost impossible to construct a documentary film without some kind of agenda. In the subtext of Pirate Radio USA the filmmakers admit it was impossible to remove themselves entirely from the action.

Says Pearson, “If the film has a particular agenda, it is post-objective. In our mainstream media we are creating a condition in which we avoid the obvious for fear of not being objective. It’s impossible to document things with any real objectivity—I mean, can you really excuse yourself from being a human being? What we tried to do was document our experiences as we had them—that was our goal…And only by placing ourselves within a situation as people who have been affected by those experiences was the truth most likely to be revealed.”

Resonating within each frame of Pirate Radio USA is a discovery Pearson holds very close to heart. “Through the making of this film, we learned that our freedom of speech is a tool by which we keep ourselves free. It’s not an end in and of itself. Pirate radio, in a sense, is one small, self-organizing effort to create a better world.” Clearly, in seeking to capture something small, Jones and Pearson set sail into the straits of something much bigger.

Pirate Radio USA has been awarded film festival kudos by Austin FF, Zion Independent FF, and the Wine Country FF where it won Best documentary Film. B-Side Entertainment has accepted the film for distribution.