John is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker, whose work has received two national Emmy nominations. He has directed eleven documentary films for primetime national broadcast on PBS and CNN over the past 20 years.

His films have tackled such diverse subjects as the false imprisonment of a leader of the Black Panther Party (Passin’ It On/POV/PBS); Latino gangs in Chicago (Making Peace/PBS); Latinos in World War II (Latino Americans/PBS); the re-segregation of America’s schools (Beyond Brown/PBS); the history of Latino civil rights (The Longoria Affair/Independent Lens/PBS); the evolution of Chicano music (The Chicano Wave/PBS); the Chicano movement (Latino Americans/PBS); and the genocide of Native Americans in the Southwest (The Last Conquistador/POV/PBS). 

They have garnered top prizes at film festivals from San Francisco to Chicago to Mumbai, have been broadcast across the United States, Canada and Europe, and have been featured at major museums and cultural institutions – including the Hirshorn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Lincoln Center and the National Gallery of Art.

John grew in Seattle, taught photography in rural India, and is currently the director of the documentary film program at Michigan State University.