Who is Hans Peter Elmar Hansen?

Hutchinson is heading to the Big Apple. The town is a bit player in the new documentary, “The Life and Times of Hans Peter Elmar Hansen,” by David Brink.

The film will be screened Wednesday, Oct. 28, during the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in Manhattan, where more than 180 films from around the world will be in competition.

Who is Hans Peter Elmar Hansen? A Danish farm boy who was born in 1896 and immigrated to the United States in 1921. He came to Hutchinson because that was where his Danish relatives had settled. He followed his older sister, Anna and her husband, Andrew Nielsen, to Hutchinson. Although Anna and Andrew had arrived the year before, they were not the first relatives to settle in the area.

Hansen supported himself by working at a variety of jobs including farming, in restaurants, clothing stores and in the timber industry. By the mid 1920s, he had moved to Minneapolis where he lived until the Great Depression. For a short period during those years, Hansen and his family had to move back to Hutchinson and work on a relative’s farm for room and board just to survive. Hansen eventually returned to Minneapolis where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died at the age of 100 in the fall of 1996.

Hansen's grandson, David Brink, who produced and narrated the documentary, said it is comprised of numerous interviews, videos, pictures and audio clips, but it is primarily based on a videotaped interview he conducted with his 95-year-old grandfather in 1991.

To read more, see the story in the print edition of the Hutchinson Leader for Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009.

(Kay Johnson is a staff writer at the Leader. She can be reached at johnson@hutchinsonleader.com.)