James Le Sueur

James Dean Le Sueur is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker and historian. As the Samuel Clark Waugh Distinguished Professor of International Relations and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, he studies the history of ideas and empires and makes feature documentary films that fuse a professional historian's understanding of history with a cinematographer's view of the world. He completed his PhD in history at the University of Chicago. While a PhD candidate, he studied at École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris with the eminent sociologist and theorist Pierre Bourdieu. In 1990, he was a DAAD Fellow (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) in Germany, where he was an eye-witness German reunification. He writes public essays and books on the history of 20th-century national liberation movements and is planning docuseries based on his extensive research on decolonization. Le Sueur's first feature documentary film, "The Art of Dissent" is distributed by Gravitas Ventures (2021). A co-production of Czech TV in Prague and NUtech Ventures at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, the film won five international film festival awards during the pandemic. The Czech version of the film with a voiceover by Martin Pechlat premiered on Czech TV in December 2021 for the 10th anniversary of Václav Havel's death. Le Sueur has several feature documentary films underway: "Seasons of COVID" (in production with filming complete), "Before September" (development and filming), and "The Peril of Dissent" (development and filming ). He plans to finish "Seasons of COVID" in fall 2022, after which he will resume filming "Before September" and "The Peril of Dissent." Both films were in filming and development but paused because of the COVID-19 pandemic and international travel restrictions. He is also in the development stages for science film series with K. Lee Lerner. "Seasons of COVID" focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in Nebraska and the Great Plains. Le Sueur is co-writing the script with Susan Pahlke (JD). The movie is in production with filming complete. "Before September" is a study of terrorism in the United States before and after 9/11. The film assesses the origins and execution of the so-called "War on Terror," tracing the evolution of American strategies to combat militant extremism before 9/11 through the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. "The Peril of Dissent" focuses on death threats made by authoritarian regimes, religious/political extremists after 1989 against writers, artists, athletes, journalists, activists, and those in the public sphere. It carries this issue into the present day with exiled writers around the world. He is a cinematographer, photographer, producer, editor, scriptwriter, and author. His films are produced by Fox Hollow Films and managed by NUtech Ventures.