New film ‘Master’ delves into narratives of race and fear, premieres Friday at the Sundance Film Festival

Charlotte Hornsby, cinematographer for the new film, MASTER which covers race and fear, New York, NY, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Impact24, Inc., St. George News

ST. GEORGE — A new film, “Master,” touches on narratives of race and fear with a deep intensity. Its world premiere is Friday at the Sundance Film Festival. Following Sundance, Amazon, who has already picked up distribution rights, will premiere the film and described it as social commentary horror.

“I think, as a genre, it’s really right for exploring the very real horrors of the racial history of our country,” Charlotte Hornsby, “Master” cinematographer, told St. George News. “And from a camera perspective, it’s a really exciting space to inhabit because the camera can be a lot more active and the lighting can be a lot more expressionistic.”

“Master” follows two African American women who encounter disturbing experiences at a predominantly white New England college. The school is near Salem, Massachusetts.

Actresses Regina Hall, Zoe Renee and Amber Gray star in “Master.” Renee plays Jasmine, a freshman at a fictitious college and Hall plays Gail Bishop, who has just come into the position of a housemaster. The women initially come to the college with a lot of optimism, excitement and a feeling of belonging.

Horsby said as the movie unfolds, a series of sinister events target each woman, who then realizes that the dark past of the college and America as a whole is still “very, very much alive.”

Actress Regina Hall plays Gail Bishop, the housemaster in the new social commentary horror movie MASTER,

Through their experience, they witness microaggressions of other students and faculty. They also feel aggressions through supernatural hauntings. For example, there is a vandalized image of one of the women and a noose hanging on her door.

“There’s this real energy that is kind of driving out both of these women and they really have to grapple with what’s behind it,” Hornsby said.

The actual production of the film saw many challenges that began when the film was shut down two weeks into shooting just before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020. It then had to be finished amid the pandemic a year later in 2021, at which point they had a new crew, a new cast and new locations.

Despite the film’s production challenges, she said the “miraculous gift” that they could continue making the movie excited everyone on the project. When the filming began the second time, it was before the rollout of the COVID vaccine, which altered the way they all worked on set together.

“I’m lucky to say that I worked with an absolutely extraordinary crew on ‘Master.’ Even when we had to wear face masks, shields, deal with this unseen and couldn’t all eat together at the same lunch table,” Hornsby said. “The morality and the kind of can-do energy of everyone was incredible and pretty exhilarating. It was just a community that was supportive and believed in the film.”

Also, the director, Mariama Diallo, decided they needed to manage their time differently when they came back to finish “Master.”

“Mariama and I had this mantra about scheduling our time where we really wanted to focus on the suspense and horror sequences to make sure that we had enough time to execute all the shots that you need to, like, elongate time and build suspense in the edit,” Hornsby said, adding that even though that had returned, their days were a little bit more constrained.

Charlotte Hornsby films MASTER a social commentary horror movie premiering Friday, Jan. 21, at the Sundance Film Festival and then on Amazon, New York, NY, unspecified date | Photo provided by Impact 24 PR, St. George News

Producing “Master” was the second time Hornsby worked with director Diallo. The first movie they worked on together was Hair Wolf. Diallo is also “One of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch.” The film was produced by Joshua Astrachan, Brad Becker-Parton and Andrea Roa. The executive producer is Regina Hall.

For Hornsby, a passion for filmmaking began at a young age.

“When I was growing up, my dad had this rule for us,” Hornsby, who grew up with two sisters, said, “if you want to watch a movie, then you can make a movie. Then you can watch the movie that you just made.”

That family rule provided Hornsby a comfortable introduction into filmmaking as playful theatrical productions with friends. She used an old VHS camcorder in her hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.

“It always felt like playing pretend, and it felt very accessible,” she said.

During high school, she learned more about editing and developing different distinct voices inside of cinematography. She also worked at her high school news channel, and she enjoyed it so much, she pursued it professionally.

“I really wanted to shoot my own stuff and edit it,” Hornsby said.

Though she tried all different aspects of filmmaking during her time at New York University, from writing to directing and production design, she said she found her true home with cinematography.

“I felt like it was my gift,” she said. “So, after film school, I bought a camera and moved to New Orleans. I did a documentary there for the singer Solange Knowles, and it kept working out from there.”

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

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