This free, public screening of the 1978 film Northern Lights, featuring an in-person conversation with co-director John Hanson, is presented by the department of theatre and film studies and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts as part of the 2025 UGA Humanities Festival.

Winner of the Camera d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's Northern Lights marks one of the most moving and committed works of political cinema from the late 1970s. Its critical and festival acclaim heralded the rise to prominence of American indie cinema a decade later, as kicked off by the Sundance showing of sex, lies and videotape in 1989.

Dramatizing the formation of the populist Nonpartisan League in North Dakota in the mid-1910s, Northern Lights captures the plight of immigrant Dakotan farmers as they toil and struggle against the combined forces of industry and finance. Amid this paroxysm of class tension, two young lovers find themselves swept up in the tide. Shot on location (on grain-rich black-and-white 16mm) in the dead of winter and featuring an astonishing cast of non-professional actors, this handmade masterpiece remains a stirring monument to collectivity. 

Northern Lights will be shown in a new, 4K digital restoration—the version which premiered to a rapturous reception at last fall's New York Film Festival. Following the screening, co-director John Hanson will speak about his experience making the film and answer questions from those in attendance, in a session moderated by Christopher Sieving, associate professor of film studies.