Micro Revolution with Global Effects;
A Micro-Filmmaker Documents Micro-Radio
By Paul Riismandel

Originally published in Micro-Film magazine #4, Aug. 2001.

Latter day global capitalism is a funny and paradoxical beast. Across the world multinational corporations are negotiating with governments to create a so-called global marketplace. Meanwhile, there are thousands, if not millions of people who are actively protesting this movement. They believe that their voices and opinions have been ignored, that globalization as it is happening is fundamentally undemocratic and fashioned only to benefit the wealthy few at the expense of the rest of the world.

And these opponents of global corporate control are using the very products of multinationals against them.

In the aftermath of the WTO protests in Seattle the cellular phone has become viewed by authorities as not just a technology of convenience, but a dangerous weapon in the arsenal of the protestor. Police may have pepper spray and rubber bullets, but the folks on the street have the tools of near-instantaneous global communication that allow them to stay one step ahead of the cops, all the while documenting what goes down. Activists put to use mobile phones, digital cameras, minidisk recorders, and the Internet, products for which they can thank the likes of Sony, AT&T, Motorola and Microsoft.

Seattle also saw the convergence of two more technologies that have been embraced and exploited by independently-minded citizens hell-bent on communicating to a larger audience: digital video and unlicensed, so-called ‘pirate’ radio. On the streets of Seattle citizen-journalists wielding inexpensive digital camcorders brought to a global audience images of a radically diverse and united front of demonstrators, who met with an ultimately violent police force. All the while unlicensed radio stations served as an unfiltered up-to-the-minute news and information source for the protestors on the streets and the residents of an embattled Seattle.

Independent filmmaker Kevin Keyser captured this moment in his documentary on the unlicensed radio movement, Free Radio. In it Keyser brings us inside a station set up for the protests where we watch the operators broadcast breaking news on clashes with police, along with announcements for the arrested and injured, all while they watch live coverage on TV. At that moment you can see a grassroots newsroom paradigm being born.

Keyser, a former assignment editor and news segment producer at a San Francisco television station, got turned on to free radio while doing a story on a local unlicensed broadcaster. That broadcaster just happened to be Stephen Dunifer of Free Radio Berkeley (FRB), a major figure in the world of unlicensed broadcasting. Keyser says that Dunifer taught him “a bit about the history of the FCC and how one of their original ideas about FM radio was to keep the airwaves open and accessible to all people.”

The unlicensed broadcasting movement is commonly said to have started with a blind African-American man living in the projects of Springfield, IL, Mbanna Kantako. Recognizing a need to communicate effectively and easily with his neighbors, all poor African-Americans, Kantako chose to put a very small radio transmitter on the air for the purpose of organizing his audience and educating them about their rights. Yet Kantako quickly found out that there was no way the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would ever make him a licensed broadcaster—especially since the Feds wouldn’t give licenses for radio stations operating at under a hundred watts of power.

Kantako didn’t let this stop him, instead choosing to build his own one-watt transmitter—what he would term a “micropower” station—to put Black Liberation Radio, which would later become Human Rights Radio, on the air. Inadvertently, he also touched off a grassroots media revolution.

Inspired by Kantako, Dunifer created FRB and challenged the FCC head-on. He scored a minor victory for micropower broadcasting, bringing national attention to the movement, when he and FRB won a temporary injunction preventing the FCC from shutting down the station while their case was in trial.

Meanwhile, Dunifer and his cohorts became one of the chief suppliers of low-cost radio transmitters and equipment to the microbroadcasting community. The same advances in microchip and integrated circuit design that make camcorders and laptop computers possible also make simple, cheap radio transmitters a reality. You still can’t buy a one or ten watt radio station at your local Best Buy (though you can buy a tiny one to play your portable CD in your car stereo). But the parts are out there and only a little harder to find. Dunifer and others like him make it even easier.

Dunifer appears throughout Free Radio, but it is not simply a documentary about Free Radio Berkeley. Rather, Keyser takes the viewer on a virtual nationwide tour of micropower radio sites, including Micro-Kind Radio in San Marcos TX, Studio X in Seattle, Kantako’s Human Rights Radio, and a demonstration in support of low-power FM held in front of the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, DC. As your silent guide, Keyser takes you inside the studios of unlicensed broadcasters, some of which are clandestine, and some of which are also homes.

Keyser says that gaining access to unlicensed stations and broadcasters was one the most difficult parts of producing Free Radio. “It was difficult at first to gain the trust of free radio station operators because they had legitimate worries about being shut down and having all their equipment confiscated by the FCC. It was also hard to get in touch with these people, since they do their best to keep… out of the public eye.”

But once he was actually doing the interviews, he found them to be easier than expected. “Once we sat down and started talking, most of the people I talked to had a lot to say about microbroadcasting and free speech. Since I was also very interested in these issues, the interviews ended up being very interesting for me and I was never at a loss for questions.”

In the documentary Keyser lets the broadcasters speak for themselves. Within the context of their own home studios many of them seem at ease, relating their diverse motivations for going on the air without a license. We also get to spend time in the studios of these stations, observing a type of free, uninhibited type of radio that most communities can only dream about.

Keyser takes us to the Texas border community of San Marcos, and what looks like an ordinary suburban home, except that it is also the studio of Micro-Kind radio. The station is unique because its operators practice an open-door policy, allowing anyone with a message to communicate to be on their station. In one scene, a local laborer makes a plain-spoken testament to his job and his union, and then turns the microphone to a clearly inebriated cohort who makes a relatively incoherent shout-out, oblivious to the non-sequitur. Further north, Keyser visits Free Radio Austin, whose engineer encased their transmitter in oil and buried it six feet in the ground, both to help dissipate the Texas heat and to make it difficult digging for authorities.

The far-flung geography of the stations that were willing to cooperate with Keyser made producing the video more difficult than if he had simply covered the stations in his home-base of the Bay Area. “I ended up maxing out a few credit cards and sleeping on a lot of couches to make it happen,” he admits.

Asked what he might do differently, he reconsiders visiting so many people and stations. “I would have tried to focus more on one or two peoples’ stories instead of talking to 20 or so people. I think viewers are more interested in a film that focuses on one or two people. They come to care more about those characters and thus more about the issues they are talking about. It seems to be a better way to tell a story.”

But that depends on what story you’re trying to tell. Although Free Radio doesn’t paint a detailed portrait of any one microbroadcaster or station, it succeeds in creating a vivid collage that at once portrays the diversity of people, motivations and ideologies behind micropower stations, while also drawing out the threads of unity that make these stations part of a broader movement.

Almost universally, the microbroadcasters Keyser interviews say that they’re fed up with bland, homogenized corporate radio stations, and that they believe there are important voices and truths that are left out of the airwaves. Microbroadcasters see their free radio stations as a way to counter the corporate media, and even the increasingly corporatized public media.

This reaction is not lost on Keyser, who sees how independent filmmakers are similarly restrained. He notes that “once indy filmmakers get their films done there aren’t that many places to actually distribute them to. PBS and basic cable are one route, but both are often too tame for most independent filmmakers.”

He sees a fundamental similarity between independent filmmakers and micropower broadcasters: “Both are trying to work in a world dominated by corporate media, and both are trying to do things that often go untouched by the corporate giants. They are both pushing the envelope of free speech and access, and they are both forced to do things on the cheap, since they don’t get all those corporate dollars. They are like the last mom and pop diner in a town full of McDonald’s and all the other nasty fast food giants.”

Perhaps the ultimate test of a documentary film is how well it is received by those who are intimate with its subject matter. Will they see it as an accurate reflection of reality, or instead a media-fantasy version that romanticizes or vilifies its subjects?

Free Radio garnered positive reviews, notably from Seattle’s alternative weekly, The Stranger, and from About.com’s film reviews. More importantly, Keyser says that “the people who came out and saw it seemed to like it, especially the people involved with microbroadcasting. I think a lot of them were worried that an outsider like me wouldn’t portray their story very well, but I tried to do my homework and talk to all the right people.”

Clearly, the experience of making Free Radio had a direct effect on Keyser. “I also stopped being an outsider,” he admits. “I started doing a show on Berkeley Liberation Radio after I finished the film.”

Free Radio has probably gotten more exposure than most documentaries shot independently on digital video and edited on a home computer. In addition to screenings, Keyser says that the film “made it onto several TV stations around the country, so a lot of people got to see it,” and it is now available in the AK Press catalog.

But just like a free radio station, an independent documentary is not undertaken to be a money-maker. The film ended up costing $10,000 to make, and has recouped $4000 through video sales over the Internet. Keyser jokingly attests that his resources for making the film included “credit cards and ramen noodles.” He also relied upon a Canon XL-1 digital camcorder which he used to shoot the entire video. A so-called ‘prosumer’ unit costing just a little bit more than most of the camcorders at your local electronics store, Keyser says that he “really like[s] that camera and would recommend it to anyone looking to do something like this. It’s the most affordable way to get professional-looking results.”

As the opening frames of Free Radio informs, in January 2000 the FCC decided to take on the initiative of licensing low-power radio stations for the first time since the late 1970s. For some, like author and micropower radio activist, Greg Ruggiero, this was an indication that the FCC had actually heard the arguments made by unlicensed broadcasters.

Since Free Radio was completed, and after a year of intense lobbying by the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio, the FCC’s original plan for licensing low-power radio stations was effectively eviscerated by Congress. Most indicative of the political and economic intentions of the broadcasting industry and its well-paid Congressmen, under the new rules, most urban areas would be ineligible to have new low-power radio stations, ruling out many of the areas most well-served and in need of such stations. Citizens looking for more democratic radio in hotbeds of unlicensed free radio activity, like Austin, Seattle and San Francisco, continue to only have radio pirates to look to.

Unfortunately, in some of these cities the ranks of unlicensed broadcasters have been thinned. In October 2000 the FCC got their opportunity to do some digging when they raided and shut down Free Radio Austin and their literally underground transmitter. This happened only a month after a court order forced Micro-Kind to cease operations, in what looked like an FCC sweep of unlicensed broadcasters in Texas. Around the same time the Feds raided the home of Mbanna Kantako in Springfield, IL, also seizing his station. Authorities visited Kantako again when he went back on the air with a new transmitter one month later.

Still, FCC action against unlicensed broadcasters doesn’t seem very effective is stopping the movement. Unfazed after two FCC raids, Mbanna Kantako returned Human Rights Radio to the air in the Spring of this year. In other cities, like Austin and Los Angeles, new stations take to the air quickly to fill the void left by ones that are shut down.

When a new micropower radio station can be put together for less than a thousand dollars, there’s less disincentive for a committed would-be broadcaster to try his hand at the airwaves, nor for a shut-down station to make another go of it. The same is true when a near-broadcast-quality digital camcorder can be had for less than a month’s rent in a major city. There’s little to hold back the average citizen from becoming the new filmmaker, documenting for herself her realities and the news she sees everyday.

The economics of modern technology has created an opportunity that the law has difficulty stopping. This can be seen vividly in the growing protest movement demanding economic democracy across the world. Since Seattle, no large political or economic organization, from the World Trade Organization to the Democratic Party, can meet without also enduring well organized opposition armed with their own video cameras, radio stations and Internet feeds.

Keyser thinks “independent media is getting more and more popular as people look for alternatives to the boring stuff you see put out by corporations.” There is a new independent media happening, whether the old media likes it or not. Independent filmmakers, with inexpensive digital camcorders in their hands, join unlicensed free radio broadcasters at the front lines, whether those lines are in the streets of Quebec City, the airwaves or the minds of restless audiences.

Does this mean Sony will stop selling camcorders?

Not as long as we’re buying them.