Fox Hollow Films is an independent film production company based in Lincoln, Nebraska. We produce feature documentary films and live action dramas. It is owned by James Dean Le Sueur, a prize-winning filmmaker and distinguished historian (Samuel Clark Waugh Distinguished Professor of International Relations at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford University). Fox Hollow Films uses cinematic storytelling to explore the dynamic intersections art, history, politics, and ideas.
Fox Hollow Film's first feature documentary, The Art of Dissent, debuted at film festivals in 2020. The project utilizes never-before-seen film and TV archives from Czech TV in Prague to showcase how the underground dissident movement in Czechoslovakia resisted the communist totalitarian state after the Soviet-led invasion in 1968. The film premiered at the prestigious Rhode Island International Film Festival in August 2020, where it won the first of five awards. The Art of Dissent is a co-production of NUtech Ventures and Czech TV. It was begun at Fox Hollow Films and finished in Prague at FRMOL Production. The Art of Dissent is distributed in North America by Gravitas Ventures. The Czech version, Umění disentu, was broadcast by Czech TV to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Czech President Václav Havel’s death in December 2021. It is distributed globally (outside North America and Czech Republic) by DA Films. The movie has been translated into Czech, Arabic, and Albanian.
Fox Hollow Films is currently in development and pre-production on a short contemporary drama called American Miniature with plans to begin production in Spring 2024. Le Sueur is co-writing this script with Cavlin Doerr and Cade Suing.
Fox Hollow Films has three new feature documentary films in development and production: Seasons of COVID (release likely in 2026), Before September, and The Peril of Dissent. Filming Seasons of COVID in March 2020. With filming completed, the movie is in production with plans to release it at film festivals in 2025. Seasons of COVID is investigative film about the broader questions of the pandemic and its legacy in science, public heath, and cultral politics. James and Susan Pahlke are co-writing the script, and James is directing and editing the film. The movie is produced by Fox Hollow Films in association with NUtech Ventures at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. James and NUtech Venture's Arpi Siyahian are the film's two executive producers.Before September traces terrorism in the United States before 9/11 and focus on three critical legal cases. Filming for this project began several years ago and blends Susan's expertise in legal research with James scholarship on the history of terrorism. It's a perfect filmmaking duo of law and history.Filming for The Peril of Dissent was begun over 10 years ago, and James will resume filming in France and Europe after the completion of Seasons of COVID. The Peril of Dissent tells 'The Big Picture' story of how the lives of writers, artists, athletes, and cultural actors from Muslim-majority states were disrupted and transformed by death threats from religious radicals and state actors after the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie. It is ultimately a story of how death threats affected exiled artists and cultural actors, and, in turn, how in their literary work has transformed the cultures of asylum nations including France, Holland, Belgium, England, and the United States.
Who We Are
James Le Sueur's enchantment with images began with photography at age of nine when his father built him a darkroom. Trained first as a professional photographer, photojournalist, as a journalist, James is a first-generation college graduate and a native of Missoula, Montana. He owned and operated a successful photography studio in high school and college. He graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in History in 1986 and from the University of Chicago with a PhD in 1996. Before moving to Nebraska in 2001, James was a history professor at the University of La Verne in Southern California. James has been chair of the Department of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln since 2016. As prominent scholar of empires and decolonization, James is currently writing a trade book on the history of decolonization and national liberation. His literary agent is Joelle Delbourgo (Joelle Delbourgo Associates).
Susan Pahlke is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and took her JD from the University of Nebraska College of Law.
She is an attorney and specializes in legal research. She worked on The Art of Dissent with James in Prague as cinematographer (Second Camera). With Fox Hollow films, Susan is attorney, cinematographer, researcher, and script writer with James on Seasons of COVID.
The University of Nebraska Lincoln wrote a piece about our movie and that we're going to soon be available on major cable and internet platforms.
