(1978), an independently produced film, tells the story of North Dakota farmers who rebel against the economic tyranny of the railroads, grain dealers, and bankers by working for the election of Nonpartisan League candidates in 1916.

A mixture of historical fact and imaginative fiction, the film shows why one individual becomes involved in a radical, grassroots political movement. It begins with shots of Henry Martinson, a lifelong socialist who was in his nineties at the time the film was made. Martinson reminisces about the old days when ‘‘we had the powers that be on the run'' and then discovers a diary that belonged to the fictional Ray Sorenson. The action flashes back to 1915, when Ray, his brother John, and their father are farming near Crosby, North Dakota. Visiting Nonpartisan League members advocate political changes that will give farmers more control over the grain-marketing process and thus ease their economic troubles. At first Ray is skeptical, but after his father dies and his fiancée's parents lose their farm, he is motivated by these personal losses not only to join the league but also to become an organizer, recruiting new members and campaigning for league candidates. League candidates win the primary election of 1916, but John and Ray receive a letter notifying them the bank is foreclosing on their farm. Martinson concludes the film by reporting the league's victory in the general election of 1916 and hoping that such victories might happen again in the future.

Another major theme of the film is the desire to have a personal life and the sacrifice of that life required by those who commit themselves to a cause. At the beginning of the film, Ray proposes to Inga Olsness. However, as Ray becomes increasingly involved in league activities, they seldom see each other, and their relationship deteriorates. Inga tells a friend that she no longer loves Ray as she once did, and she fears that Ray will always be away from home because the struggle will continue indefinitely. Ray and Inga might eventually get together or they might drift apart, but the disillusioned Inga feels they will never be able to live the better life for which Ray is struggling.

The film was written, directed, produced, and edited by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson through Cine Manifest, a San Francisco– based film collective that was formed to produce socially conscious narrative films. Both Hanson and Nilsson have family connections in North Dakota. A few actors, including Robert Behling, Susan Lynch, and Joe Spano, are professionals, but nonprofessional North Dakotans play the other roles. Most of the film was shot in Crosby and at Bonanzaville, a pioneer village in West Fargo, North Dakota. The North Dakota Humanities Council contributed greatly to the production of the film, which was made with an extremely low budget– a little over $300,000. The film premiered in Crosby in July 1978 and was shown throughout North Dakota and the Midwest before being entered in the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) Award for best first feature film in 1979.

Although depicts an actual political movement, viewers will learn little about the Nonpartisan League from it. Martinson, an ardent socialist, is not a good representative of the league's politics, which were much more moderate. None of the league's three main leaders–A. C. Townley, Lynn Frazier, and William Lemke–appears in the film (Lemke is not even mentioned), and it does little more than hint at why the league was in power for only six years. The film has been criticized for showing women only in subservient, passive roles rather than as partners and leaders in the movement. Hanson and Nilsson, however, state that their intent was to create a social documentary that depicts the personal aspects of a political movement rather than a historical documentary.

The style of the film is unusual. The dialogue is extremely sparse, and sometimes the characters speak Norwegian. The film's photography captures both intimate family scenes and the open spaces of the prairie, and the scene that shows people threshing during a blizzard is particularly effective. Photographed by Judy Irola with 16-mm black-and-white film, which created a high-contrast image with rich tones and frequent silhouettes, the film was later blown up to 35 mm for theatrical release, which added to its grainy appearance. Irola also used a relatively oldfashioned camera style: the camera seldom moves, and most action takes place inside the frame. These techniques help create a sense that the film takes place at a much earlier time, and its visual world, which includes hard work, struggles against the forces of nature, and tough economic times, evokes the theme so often repeated in the history of the Great Plains–that of farm families being forced off their farms.

See also PROTEST AND DISSENT: Martinson, Harry; Nonpartisan League.