2023 APSA Mini-Film Festival

Come grab some popcorn and enjoy the research, learning, and teaching potential of film!

Given that the 2023 American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting and Exhibition will be hosted in Los Angeles, the 2023 Program Chairs Zoltán Búzás and Felicity Vabulas are thrilled to offer a unique mini-film festival during the conference. This is particularly apropos because the convention center is a stone’s throw from Hollywood and the city is known for global cinema.

Documentary film can serve as primary source material for research, elevating the voices of marginalized communities and undiscovered stories. Film can also serve as a valuable tool for advocacy and teaching by exposing students to political themes that come to life before their eyes. With this in mind, the conference co-chairs have chosen five documentary films that cover issues related to this year’s conference theme and showcase diversity in both topic and location. 

While each of the films will be an entertaining way to end your busy conference days, we also hope the films will foster and provoke critical discussions of important events that you might also take back to the classroom.

Film details and showtimes can be found below.

Navalny

The 2023 Academy Award winner for best documentary feature –  is a film about the poisoning and imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who dared to tell the truth about the Kremlin.

Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote

Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote tells about the growing threat of voter suppression and election sabotage as seen in the US 2022 midterm elections and Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. 

The First Step

The First Step walks alongside activist and political commentator Van Jones who controversially works across party lines on landmark criminal justice reform and a more humane response to the addiction crisis in a divided America. 

Unapologetic

Unapologetic recounts how Black millennial organizers, after two police killings, challenge a Chicago administration that is complicit in state violence against its Black residents. 

The Rise and Fall of Hong Kong

The Rise and Fall of Hong Kong explores Hong Kong’s battle for their democracy with interviews from protestors, professors, politicians, and activists telling how their new National Security Law has turned this international business mecca into a Chinese controlled police state.

APSA Oral History Project: History in the Profession

This collection of interviews contributes to a continuous project that seeks to amplify the scholarship and contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to the profession.

About the Films

Navalny
Navalny takes viewers inside the careful investigation into the shocking and brazen assassination attempt against Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, and who was behind it. Through his years-long campaign against corruption among Russia’s elites, Navalny has developed powerful enemies. His publicized revelations, and calls for democratic reforms, have enraged Vladimir Putin, who refuses to even say his name in public. In August 2020, Navalny was secretly poisoned with a military-grade chemical nerve agent in an elaborate attempt on his life. Despite denials from the Russian government, the poison was later linked to the Kremlin through investigations by international news organizations, including Bellingcat and CNN. View the trailer.

Unapologetic
Unapologetic captures a tense and polarizing moment in Chicago’s fight for the livelihood of its Black residents. The film follows Janaé and Bella, two young abolitionist organizers, as they work within the Movement for Black Lives to seek justice for Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald, two young Black people killed by Chicago police. They aim to elevate a progressive platform for criminal justice to a police board led by Lori Lightfoot and a complicit city administration, while also elevating leadership by women and femmes. View the trailer.

The Rise and Fall of Hong Kong
This film explores Hong Kong’s battle for their democracy with interviews from protestors, professors, politicians, and activists telling how their new National Security Law has turned this international business mecca into a Chinese controlled police state.

Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote
Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight To Vote (2022) by Robert Greenwald (Director of Outfoxed, Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Making A Killing: Guns Greed and the NRA) is a powerful documentary about the growing threat of voter suppression and election sabotage to our 2022 midterm elections. In 2021, 19 states passed 34 new voter laws following the Big Lie of the 2020 election. The film focuses on this recent wave of voter suppression and subversion laws being enacted in states, and how the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp provides a case study for understanding today’s voter suppression laws across the country. Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight To Vote now includes perspectives from voters in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Georgia that highlight how these new laws will affect their constitutional right to vote. Suppression tactics covered in the film include: deliberate barriers to registration; polling place closures; voter purges; missing absentee ballots; extreme wait times at polling locations; exact match disqualifications; new vote by mail limitations; changes to ballot collection and drop off and more. Voter suppression laws disproportionately affect American Students, Senior Citizens, Black, Indigenous, Latine, and People of Color from casting their ballots. Suppressed and Sabotaged 2022 is a call to action against the calculated, unconstitutional and racist attacks intended to suppress the right to vote in America. View the trailer.

The First Step
In a divided America, Van Jones controversially works across party lines on landmark criminal justice reform and a more humane response to the addiction crisis. Attempting to be a bridge builder in a time of extreme polarization, takes him deep into the inner workings of a divisive administration, internal debates within both parties, & the lives of frontline activists fighting for their communities. View the trailer.

APSA Oral History Project: History in the Profession

This collection of interviews contributes to a continuous project that seeks to amplify the scholarship and contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to the profession and investigate the history of race and racism in the political science profession. It further builds upon the APSA-Pi Sigma African American Alpha Oral History Project (1988-1994) and is motivated by the McClain Task Force on Systemic Inequality in the Discipline (2022). 

Film Showing Schedule