Born in St. Paul, Minnesota and raised in North Dakota, John Hanson received his B.A. from Carleton College and did postgraduate studies in architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. He then began a career in film, going on to direct the motion pictures NORTHERN LIGHTS, WILDROSE and SHIMMER and numerous film, video and television documentaries. 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 Camera d'Or Award for Best First Feature. 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 Franscisco and the Independent Feature Project. He lives in Bayfield, Wisconsin.