- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba,
host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you the story of four students from Africa
who are trying to make their communities a better place
by attending college in America in the film Brief Tender Light.
The four undergraduates are not just attending any college.
They're attending MIT, America's premier tech university.
One of them wants to build a better infrastructure
in Tanzania.
One wants a more secure life for his family in Nigeria.
One wants to help reconstruct his community
in post-genocide Rwanda.
And one wants to help foster democracy in Zimbabwe.
They feel a duty to their homes back in Africa
while discovering who they are as students
as they navigate college in America,
which creates conflict at times.
Add in the academic challenges
that anyone who attends MIT faces,
and we see the struggles as the students come of age
with the weight of the world on their young shoulders.
Brief Tender Light is the directorial debut
for filmmaker Arthur Musah.
Musah grew up in Ghana.
He himself attended MIT over 20 years ago,
studying electrical engineering with a minor in writing.
Part of the lengthy production process included
the director going to each of his subjects' home country
and documenting what their life was like,
vetting his actors by doing a deep dive into their pasts
to envision how they would come across as characters
in the film.
He brings his own experiences to the project
and helps paint a picture through the lens
he viewed America from.
Musah's experiences helped him identify with his subjects
while capturing their coming of age on camera
as he mixes his own story into the narrative.
This was not the plan early on.
The director started the project in 2011,
but it wasn't until 2021, ten years after cameras rolled,
that he realized the impact of how his involvement
would play a role in the story.
Through the editing process, Musah noticed
that when his subjects talked to him off camera,
essentially breaking the fourth wall,
he discovered that it added a layer to the story
he didn't anticipate.
It was through this discovery
he realized that his story complemented
and advanced the story of his actors.
That is a testament to the patience
and dedication of a documentary filmmaker.
In his film, Musah asks the question,
"Can youthful idealism survive the process of growing up?"
It certainly did in his case.
From Ghana, to electrical engineering student at MIT,
to filmmaker, to his first film being broadcast
to a worldwide audience, he has truly earned this moment.
Brief Tender Light starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.