Artist in Person

Northern Lights, which won the award for best first feature at Cannes in 1979, is set on the Dakota plains during 1915 and 1916. The project grew out of directors Hanson and Nilsson's roots in the Midwest and their curiosity about a short-lived grassroots political movement, the Nonpartisan League. Mixing actors and ordinary North Dakota residents, "Northern Lights is remarkable for the way it captures the rhythm and mood of a time, a place, and people - their look and feel and their way of relating to one another. The strikingly somber, austere cinematography of Judy Irola captures the tough struggle for survival amidst the bleakness of winter....Northern Lights is memorable for setting down in dramatic terms how the real-life Ray Sorenson made the gradual transition from self-concerned farmer to fully committed political organizer working day and night to mold the usually conservative Norwegian farmers into a viable political force in their state of North Dakota. (Showing) how and why a person becomes active in politics in human rather than ideological and rhetorical terms has never been so well-accomplished in an American film."