John Hanson
John Hanson is an American movie director and cinematographer. • Illustration — John Hanson, director and cinematographer.
John Hanson
Twebeck · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Born
- 1942
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- cinematographer · screenwriter · director
- Education
- Harvard Graduate School of Design · Carleton College
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John Hanson is an American movie director and cinematographer. • Illustration — John Hanson, director and cinematographer.
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wikidata · Q3181694
In this article
Early life
Early life
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1942 and raised in McClusky, North Dakota, Hanson graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, received his B.A. from Carleton College, and did postgraduate studies in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Career
Career
He began his career in film, going on to direct the motion pictures Northern Lights, Wildrose, and Shimmer, and numerous film, video and television documentaries. He co-founded the distribution company First Run Features. His films have been shown at film festivals around the world, including Venice, Berlin, London, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Sundance and Cannes, where Northern Lights won the Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival for Best First Feature of 1979. In addition to many other film awards, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Northland College. He is past chair and current board member of the Wisconsin Humanities Council. He was a founding member of Cine Manifest, a seminal independent film collective in San Francisco and the Independent Feature Project. He lives in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
Appearances
Appearances
• Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?, July 9, 2011
Books
• Below the Sky: Photographs of the High Plains The High Plains—the Dakotas, Montana, southern Saskatchewan—lie under a vast sky. Weather and wind throw cloud shadows across the landscape, a moving panorama of light, color and form. Earth meets sky at an incredibly distant horizon. Transcendent images materialize, drift away, reappear as the light shifts through the heavens. These remarkable photographs, taken over a span of 30 years, capture the magical moods and textures of a sublime, singular landscape—a rare retrospective of images taken by Hanson as he rambled the back roads of the plains below the sky. With an introduction by Minnesota writer Patricia Hampl and a foreword by Hanson.
Film
• Year — Title — Director — Writer — Producer — Editor — Actor — Notes • 1971 — Secrets • 1976 — Baker's Hawk — As John Stag Hanson • 1978 — Northern Lights • 1984 — Wildrose — Screenplay/story • 1987 — Heat and Sunlight • 1988 — Traveling Light • 1993 — Shimmer • 2006 — Cine Manifest (documentary) — As himself
Citations
References
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 31 August 2026.
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