HCC Associate Professor’s Film Chosen for Columbia Film Festival; Hepler’s “Taking Back the Airwaves: The Story of the Radio Pirates”

From Harford Community College:

Taking Back the Airwaves: The Story of the Radio Pirates, a film by Harford Community College Associate Professor Wayne Hepler, has been chosen for the Columbia Film Festival. The festival will take place June 24-25 in Columbia, MD.

The film introduces the radio pirates who took on hurricanes and the government in the 1950s and 60s, as well as the shadowy modern-day pirates of America still daring the law to catch them today.

Hepler learned about the original radio pirates from his international media professor in graduate school at Ohio University in the late 80s. He used his sabbatical to take two students to The Netherlands and UK to interview some of the original radio pirates, who had great stories to tell. Monopoly broadcasters like the BBC were only airing an hour of rock a week when the rest of the world was being entertained by the British Invasion and Elvis. So “pirates” set up 40 ships in international waters to broadcast rock legally to both coasts, bringing the British invasion to millions of rock-starved teens. Their success prompted legal changes that later made their broadcasts illegal.

Taking Back the Airwaves: The Story of the Radio Pirates was the headliner for the 7th Annual Town of Bel Air Film Festival’s opening night at the Bel Air Reckord Armory on October 15, 2015.

The Columbia Festival of the Arts is Howard County’s largest ongoing arts event. For more information, please visit http://www.columbiafilmfestival.org/.