‘Master Of Light’: SXSW Review

Dir: Rosa Ruth Boesten. US. 2022. 83 mins. 

George Anthony Morton calls himself “a poster child for the American Dream,” hoping to be an example for other young Black men – especially his 11-year-old nephew – in a country where one in three of them will end up in prison. Incarcerated for 11 years as a non-violent offender, Morton understands the prison system from the inside and, as the first African-American to graduate from any campus of the Florence Academy of Art, he knows the educational system as well. Channelling his experiences into his art, Morton has become a master of light, like the Dutch painters of his training. But it is not only his talent that drives first-time feature director Rosa Ruth Boesten’s film. More than just another personal story of adversity overcome, Boesten’s film paints a rich, complex portrait of Black American life.

Morton’s frustration at painting European heads over and over at art school, worshipping all things white, struck both a crisis of recognition and an insight into the pervasiveness of whitewashing in academic and cultural institutions

With its compelling multidimensional narrative that spans systemic racial injustice, the history of art and Morton’s personal search for happiness and reconciliation with his estranged mother, Master Of Light has a potentially wide appeal. After securing the Grand Jury Award in SXSW’s Documentary Feature Competition, where it premiered, it should enjoy further festival play before finding a home in independent cinemas and on curated streaming platforms.

Recalling his earliest memory of his grandmother smoking dope, and having grown up in the neighbourhood’s ‘local drug house’, Morton’s achievements - which include multiple awards and founding his own art studio in Atlanta – are inspiring. But for all of his professional art world accolades, his true achievement, Boesten’s documentary suggests, is in surviving the intergenerational trauma and neglect caused by systemic racism. In the same way that Steve James’ Hoop Dreams or Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous’ The Work (which won the same award at SXSW in 2017) inspire deeper reflection on the post-colonial strictures of American society, Master Of Light looks at the legacy and impact of both American slavery and white European art through the lens of one man’s quest to make peace with his past.

Billed as “a film by Rosa Ruth Boesten and George Anthony Morton”, Master Of Light centres Morton as the proprietor of his own story rather than its subject. A painter herself, Boesten was especially interested in documenting his search for Black representation in Dutch art from the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Morton’s frustration at painting European heads over and over at art school, worshipping all things white, struck both a crisis of recognition and an insight into the pervasiveness of whitewashing in academic and cultural institutions. As Morton seeks out skin tones that looked like his family’s, or images depicting Africans in elegant and dignified states -  which he never came across in his academic training - cinematographer Jurgen Lisse slowly pans across Morton’s white plaster casts of African faces. Even in representation they are first cast as white.

Returning to his hometown of Kansas City, Morton’s objective is to paint members of his family, including his estranged mother, who may or may not have set him up for his 135-month sentence (11 years and 3 months) in federal prison in exchange for a lighter sentence of her own. Having “always escaped through art”, Morton talks about how his experience of the systemic traps that often breed bitterness have only made him strive for redemption. Though this sentiment could have turned Boesten’s film into a story of triumphant neo-liberal values, she addresses it head-on, choosing to foreground Morton arguing with others over the reality and not just the theory of being able to get out of cycles of oppression, poverty and drug addiction. These moments, free of Gary Gunn’s occasionally overbearing score, are when the film is at its most earnest and affecting.

Ephraim Kirkwood’s edit gives these uncomfortable conversations, along with the many silent pauses as Morton is painting his family members, more space than the Dutch Masters’. When Morton visits the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Lisse remains in close up on his face, all but ignoring Rembrandt’s paintings. Lisse and Kirkwood work together to ensure that, on balance, the film is grounded in the beauty and light of Morton’s image, a new kind of American dream that breaks the old racist mould.