Ongolo Proud African

Brief Tender Light film on African students at MIT

A Ghanaian filmmaker follows four African undergraduates through Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), America’s premier technological university and his alma mater. The students embark on their MIT education with individual ambitions – to engineer infrastructure in Tanzania; to secure a better life for family in Nigeria; to contribute to post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda; and, to advance democracy in Zimbabwe. Their missions are distinct, but fueled by a common goal: to become agents of positive change back home.

Their stories are beautifully captured in the new film Brief Tender Light, which premiered at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival on Saturday 16 September 2023, where it won an award for Best First Time Filmmaker. ONGOLO Founder, Muloongo Muchelemba (MM), interviewed Arthur Musah (AM), who juggled many hats as the the film’s director, producer, cinematographer, and also as one of its editors and writers.

MM: Congratulations on the premiere of a Brief Tender Light. Could you please tell us briefly what it is about?

AM: Thank you. Brief Tender Light is the untold story of international students studying abroad in the US, told through the lives of four African students at the famous MIT. Our film zigzags between two continents, Africa and North America, for nearly a decade and explores what it means to be young and ambitious in the world today.

From left to right: Sante Nyambo (Tanzania), Fidelis Chimombe (Zimbabwe), Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) and Philip Abel Adama (Nigeria). The main stars of Brief Tender Light are dressed in graduation caps and gowns as they walk towards the camera on the MIT campus. Photo credit: Arthur Musah
From left to right: Sante Nyambo (Tanzania), Fidelis Chimombe (Zimbabwe), Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) and Philip Abel Adama (Nigeria). The main stars of Brief Tender Light are dressed in graduation caps and gowns as they walk towards the camera on the MIT campus. Photo credit: Arthur Musah

MM: What inspired you to make this film?

AM: I went through the experience of studying abroad myself, coming to the US from my home in Ghana at 19 to attend college at MIT. The flight that brought me to the US was a Ghana Airways flight that had many other Ghanaian students (including several schoolmates from the Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School) headed for universities all over the States. Over the years as I graduated and worked and settled into life in America, I always thought back to that flight and how I and many of my friends had this idea that we wanted to make our journeys in schools abroad count for our homes, and yet life had taken us down surprising paths. I felt like there was a more complex story than "go study abroad and come back to make your country better" going on, and so I wanted to explore that story in a film.

MM: Why did it take 13 years to make the film?

AM: Well, I'd planned to finish the film in five years - film a group of students for four years from arrival at MIT to graduation, and then edit for a year and release the film. But funding for the ambitious project didn't come so easily. So, it was a matter of raising some money, pushing the edit as far as possible, then raising some more and pushing the postproduction further. Before I knew it, more than a decade had passed. But we finally got the industry backing the film needed and deserved when Independent Television Service (ITVS) came on board in 2021 as a coproduction partner, and here we are with a finished film playing festivals and headed for a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) broadcast in the US on POV next year. In a way though, Brief Tender Light is a better film because of the extra time that passed. I was able to film additional scenes and threads that make the film more urgent and more resonant. [Editor’s note: POV (a cinema term for “point of view”) is television's longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films].

MM: Who was this film made for (audience)?

AM: I made the film primarily for Africans - both in the diaspora (particularly African international students past, present and future) and on the continent. I hope the film is a celebration of our lives, our dreams and ambitions, and I hope it raises a mirror to our societies so we can critically examine where we've come from and where we're going and make strategic choices. I really made this film from the belief that we have to tell our stories rather than wait for someone else to give us a chance to. Beyond this primary audience, I also feel the film is quite universal - it is a coming-of-age film, about finding yourself through the college experience, and about wrestling to define home when you find yourself calling multiple places home. These are experiences that are universal, even though the film explores them through the very specific experiences of a young woman from Tanzania (Sante Nyambo), and three young men from Nigeria (Philip Abel Adama), Rwanda (Billy Ndengeyingoma) and Zimbabwe (Fidelis Chimombe). My own story as a Ghanaian youth 20 years ago is woven into it as well.  

Sante Nyambo (Tanzania) and Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) working on a project together in a lab at MIT. Credit: Arthur Musah
Sante Nyambo (Tanzania) and Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) working on a project together in a lab at MIT. Credit: Arthur Musah

MM: What is the key message you hope viewers will leave with? 

AM: Brief Tender Light is ultimately about belonging... my hope is the film expands our ideas of who we can connect with and who we can create room for in our corner of the world. 

MM: Which of the four individuals resonated with you the most and why?

AM: Oh, this one is an impossible question. Each of the four and their families gave so much to the film, and I resonated with aspects of everyone's story. We all want respect, safety, security for our families and communities, to honour our families, to have the space to live out our own dreams while contributing meaningfully to our societies... as you'll see in the film, each of our participants gives us a unique but very relatable angle on these universal themes. 

MM: How will people in Africa get to see this film?

AM: Initially through festivals. We have applied to some and will apply to more as their submissions open up. We hope they invite us to play the film at their events. We're available for theatrical releases, broadcast/TV, and Video-On-Demand (VOD) services like Netflix as well. Any entity interested in picking up our film, please reach out to our international sales agent Cinephil (www.cinephil.cominfo@cinephil.com). Perhaps we'll be able to do some community screenings as well, which would be wonderful.

Sante Nyambo and her grandmother in Tanzania. Photo credit: Arthur Musah
Sante Nyambo and her grandmother in Tanzania. Photo credit: Arthur Musah

MM: What will success look like for you with Brief Tender Light?

AM: Ultimately success is about people getting to see our film, to host events around the film, to continue the conversations the film starts, and for the filmmaking team to have opportunities to create more films in the future. Awards, reviews, word of mouth, and distribution all help with that. 

We're thrilled to have just won an award (Best First-Time Filmmaker) at our very first public screening at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival last weekend, to have had The Boston Globe write a beautiful article on our film, to have secured a national US broadcast for next year as one of only 16 films to be picked for PBS's POV series, and to have been invited to play at several film festivals in the coming months including at the prestigious Newport Beach Film Festival where we'll have our California Premiere on Sunday October 15th.

We have many more exciting plans to unveil in the coming months and would love to expand the Brief Tender Light community of supporters that have carried the film through all the milestones over the last 13 years. Our socials are a great way to stay informed of our news (instagram/facebook/tiktok handle is @brieftenderlightfilm; twitter handle is @btenderlightdoc). I also publish a personal newsletter about my films to which anyone can subscribe here http://eepurl.com/cwy2hT.

MM: If you could go back in time, knowing that you would pivot from engineering to film making, would you still have gone to MIT?

AM: Possibly. For 10+ years I supported my film work with a job in engineering, so engineering enabled my filmmaking. But then I wonder sometimes: had I studied film as an undergrad, would I be further along in my career as filmmaker? It's hard to say what would have been. Ultimately, I've enjoyed my life so far as a big adventure, so I don't think I would want to do it differently. Not out of regret, at least. I may do it differently out of curiosity to explore other paths perhaps.

MM: Why was MIT like? Does it live up to expectations as a top engineering university in the world?

AM: MIT was challenging and fun and exhausting. I think the intensity creates deep bonds and mutual respect among students. It's a very collaborative place overall. But as you'll see in my film, MIT is not a cocoon - the real world, with all its issues, creeps in eventually.

Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) works on his laptop outdoors on the Killian Court lawn, with the MIT dome in background. Photo credit: Arthur Musah
Billy Ndengeyingoma (Rwanda) works on his laptop outdoors on the Killian Court lawn, with the MIT dome in background. Photo credit: Arthur Musah

MM: Do you think there is undue pressure put on African scholars to return to the continent or is it justified given the challenges of brain drain?

AM: I think what I've come to believe after making Brief Tender Light is that applying pressure without strategy is not really productive for African societies. There's a global competition for skilled labour and human talents, so African societies must compete. We must invest in pathways and systems that bring African scholars to integrate what their learning abroad with contexts and problem-solving at home. On a regular basis. We must also work to create societies that are safe and welcoming to all kinds of Africans - women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc. While making the film, I had to confront my own discomfort with Ghana my home... and a large part of it has to do with how safe and welcome I feel as a gay man

MM: How can proud Africans juggle living abroad with making a meaningful contribution to Africa?

AM: I find that the burden we feel from getting a rare chance to study abroad has to do with an oversized (real or imagined) expectation to do something big for your home, your family, your community, or your country. In a way, we have to be a "saviour" of sorts. But if we put that aside and we realize that we are all citizens (of countries, but also of the world), then it's enough for each of us to find our niche and do that. We have to be active citizens, instead of saviours. Then the task becomes more practical, and personally I believe the change that comes from everyone doing their part is more sustainable that having a saviour sweep in and make a drastic overhaul in one big swoop.

For details of upcoming screenings of the film, see brieftenderlightfilm.com

© 2023 Muloongo Muchelemba. All Rights Reserved

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