The bitter-sweet story of young lovers caught up in a political struggle waged by farmers against the grain trade, the banks, and the railroads. Set in North Dakota during 1915-16, a largely forgotten era of American history.
Programmer's Note
Both originally from North Dakota, co-directors John Hanson and Rob Nilsson began their collaboration in San Francisco as members of Cine Manifest, a political collective that set out to make films that "might actually say something." Hanson's grandfather was a farmer who'd been a member of the Non-Partisan League; Nilsson's grandfather was the first filmmaker in North Dakota. With the support of Cine Manifest and a grant from the North Dakota Humanities Council, they began a documentary project on the history of early-20th century political organizing in the state and, in the process, stumbled upon a subject for their first feature.
Northern Lights opens like a documentary, introducing viewers to Henry Martinson, who at the time of filming was 94 years old. According to Hanson, Martinson had been the editor of The Iconoclast, the socialist newspaper in Minot, and had joined the Non-Partisan League because "the socialists weren't having much success out there." The remainder of the film is a fictional recreation of those days, inspired by Martinson's remembrances.
Hanson and Nilsson also collected stories from local farmers to develop the screenplay and employed only three trained actors in the film’s production. Many of the performers are re-enacting their own, or their family’s histories. The authenticity is palpable and no doubt contributed to Northern Lights winning the coveted Camera d’Or for Best First Feature at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. Its reputation among cinephiles has not abated — Northern Lights was recently named by the Dardenne Brothers (Two Days, One Night, The Unknown Girl) as one of “79 Movies to See Before You Die.”
Northern Lights exists as a key example of American feature filmmakers self-distributing their own work via grassroots means well before the internet age. As writer Amanda Spake noted in a remarkable feature for Mother Jones in January 1979, “Northern Lights has been booked into about 40 of North Dakota’s 80 theaters. The movie has been held over again and again in cities like Bismarck and Fargo; in some theaters it is outdrawing Star Wars.”
The 4K digital restoration of Northern Lights was created by IndieCollect and Metropolis Post in collaboration with directors John Hanson and Rob Nilsson.