By: Kimberly Grant
Considered a term of power, the word “master” can mean someone who owns something or someone. In the case of Mariama Diallo’s upcoming horror film Master, this is a person who is put in a position as a mentor to help mold and guide students at a prestigious college. Master will be in select theaters and on Amazon Prime Video starting March 18.
Mastering The Plot
Master is about three women whose lives intersect at esteemed (and fictional) Ancaster College where long-standing traditions hide a multitude of issues. Professor Gail Bishop (played by Regina Hall) is the first black “master” of Belville House. Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) is an incoming freshman. Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) is a celebrated professor at Ancaster, who is working to earn tenure status with the school. These three women experience being black in American academia in different ways. They also shine a light on how history tends to repeat itself; whether we want it to or not.
“I do think that it’s now up to the viewer to decide what they find meaningful, what characters they believe, and what they think is going on at the school,” said Diallo, the film’s writer and director, about various themes in the film. “There’s an ambiguity to the film that I really like and that is what I’m drawn toward when I go to films.”
Mastering the Conversation
Within Master there are a number of conversation pieces that the audience witnesses in the film. These various themes are not necessarily explained, but they do spark dialogue about things like race, gender equality, gentrification, and even the overt use of the “n” word by non-African-American people. According to Diallo, the film was created to spark debate, conversation, and to help Diallo understand her own experiences.
Diallo’s first-hand experience as a black woman who graduated from Yale University and even taught as an adjunct professor at a college in New York City helped her write Master. She was first introduced to a different meaning of “master” as referring to a residential mentor when she was a student at Yale. Since the 1930s, the term has been common practice for students to refer to their campus house mentor as “master”. This tradition was adopted from British universities like Cambridge University. In 2016, the term was discontinued by Yale after student protests and calls for more sensitivity when it comes to these types of terms.
Mastering The Character Development
“I think that all of the characters have a little bit of a piece of me,” Diallo said about Master. Thinking on the main characters, Diallo states that as she wrote Master, she found herself analyzing her life and experiences as if she were a detective. She brought that aspect of herself into the storyline of Professor Gail Bishop.
Professor Bishop is played superbly by Hall, who also executive produced the film. Gail is trying to navigate a new world of access, while attempting to hold up her friend, Liv. Women have to uphold women. Gail is also trying to understand the ways in which African-American history still plays a vital role in how we live our lives today.
Liv’s quest to be a tenured professor puts a strain on her friendship with Gail, though. Liv doesn’t totally have the qualifications for a tenured professor. To make matters worse, Liv’s harsh grading where Jasmine is concerned plays a major part in how Jasmine views her experiences at college. It appears Jasmine is being held to a higher standard than her non-African-American counterparts.
At the beginning of Master Jasmine is wide-eyed and open to the experiences of college. That openness diminishes with each passing day as Jasmine encounters micro-aggressions from her peers of all races. Coupled with a rumor that a black student committed suicide in her same dorm room decades before puts Jasmine’s mental health at risk.
Mastering Sundance
“To get Master into Sundance was a long process. I think the most complicated part about the process was just finishing the film.” Master marks Diallo’s second project to appear at the Sundance Film Festival. Her first Sundance film was a horror comedy short called Hair Wolf. Not only has Master been featured in the Sundance Film Festival, but it was featured at the 2022 Miami Film Festival.
The road to getting Master in front of the right people took some time and patience as Diallo filmed the movie during the global COVID-19 pandemic. This caused her to think outside of the box and to adapt in an emerging production situation. Her determination to complete the film and get it seen drove her to keep pushing forward with the film. Now that her hard work is paying off, Diallo is ready to get back into the writer’s chair to develop something new and fresh. According to Diallo, her next film will be another horror in which she addresses her experiences in terms of race relations in society.
“My life is colored by my experiences as a black woman. So, I don’t really see Master as tackling race, but more so tackling my life,” Diallo said. “I plan to bring all of me to everything that I do.”
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