The ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund will host a screen­ing of the 30-minute seg­ment, “Free­dom in Our Life­time,” the story of the suc­cess­ful boy­cott move­ment in Apartheid-era South Africa, from the Emmy-nominated series, A FORCE MORE POWERFUL. Trans­lated into more than a dozen lan­guages, con­demned by the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment and embraced by pro-democracy activists in Libya, Belarus, China, Colom­bia and Zim­babwe, A FORCE MORE POWERFUL tells one of humanity’s most impor­tant but least under­stood sto­ries – how mil­lions have cho­sen to bat­tle the forces of bru­tal­ity and oppres­sion with non-violent weapons – and won.

The audi­ence will be invited to stay for a con­ver­sa­tion with the film’s D.C.-based direc­tor, Steve York, who has spent the past decade chron­i­cling suc­cess­ful non­vi­o­lent move­ments. His other films include Bring­ing Down A Dic­ta­tor (2002) about the non­vi­o­lent defeat of Serbia’s Slo­bo­dan Milo­se­vic, and Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, (2006), which cov­ered the stolen elec­tion in Ukraine in 2004. York recently pro­duced the sim­u­la­tion video game, Peo­ple Power, which casts the player as a leader of a non-violent pop­u­lar move­ment. He is cur­rently in pro­duc­tion on a film about the recent upris­ing in Egypt.

Fea­tur­ing in-depth inter­views, A FORCE MORE POWERFUL intro­duces sev­eral extra­or­di­nary, but largely unknown, indi­vid­u­als who drove his­toric events, and has par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance today as pop­u­lar resis­tance move­ments have recon­fig­ured the for­mer Soviet Repub­lic and shaken the Arab world. It has been screened at numer­ous film fes­ti­vals, uni­ver­si­ties, and think tanks around the world, as well as at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion, the Inter­na­tional Repub­li­can Insti­tute, the United Nations, and the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions. Hailed by The Wash­ing­ton Post as “…rich in archival footage and thought­ful interviews.…The sto­ries are inspir­ing, some­times awe­some”. A FORCE MORE POWERFUL was nom­i­nated for an Emmy in 2001.

Tues­day, August 23rd 2011

2456 Ray­burn House Office Building

 From 12:00 to 1:30PM

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As always, the ADA Ed Fund is grate­ful to Con­gress­woman Lynn Woolsey and her staff for their assis­tance in reserv­ing space and help­ing to coor­di­nate this film screen­ing. For more infor­ma­tion on upcom­ing events, please visit our ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund Face­book page

ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund Con­gres­sional Brief­ings: Doc­u­men­tary Screen­ing and Dis­cus­sion from ADA & ADA Ed Fund on Vimeo.