Queer Filmmakers Attempt to Capture the Emotional Nuance of The Great Disappointment
26 August 2024 |
Queer filmmakers in West Philly have created an artistic adaptation of The Great Disappointment which occurred during the Millerite movement. Filmmakers Chani Bockwinkel and Ty Burdenski were drawn to the nuance of the event, specifically the feeling of anticipation and using the desire for the end of times to ask deeper questions in the present. Burdenski, though not Adventist, grew up with a Seventh-day Adventist family that shared the stories of the early movement and was a student in an Adventist school. Yet the narrative held a deep relevance to them which sparked a desire to capture the emotion and nuance of The Great Disappointment.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the film, “The Seventh-day Adventist creation story was fertile ground for thinking through the pressing questions of our time: What do you do when you’re plagued with a desperate dissatisfaction with the world? How do you live when it seems the only path forward is utter and totalizing change? And what happens when these ideas go too far?”
The film Those Who Wait was meant to highlight the overlap between theorists and religious leaders, and how, with the wrong focus, ideologies can go sideways. Bockwinkel and Burdenski wanted to feature major players in the Millerite movement and the start of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, specifically Ellen White, her sister Elizabeth Harmon, William Miller, and William Foy. However, the film’s creators were intentional in communicating that the film is neither a documentary nor a narrative film but an attempt to encapsulate the apocalyptic feeling that has surprising relevance in modern times. The pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and even the upcoming 2024 election have permeated the public atmosphere with equal parts anticipation and dread, hope, and fear.
Burdenski and Bockwinkel made Those Who Wait unanchored from the narrative but focused on capturing a feeling during a very specific moment in Adventist history, utilizing excellent cinematography and little to no dialogue. Though both filmmakers endeavored to make the movie through a distinctly queer lens, the movie does not seek to satirize nor glorify the early followers of the Millerite movement, attempting to invoke empathy and humanity. An early title card states: “We look to the Hopeful — these ‘Millerites’ — not as a history lesson but as experts in a feeling.” Though it is considered queer cinema, the film contains no romance or sexuality. So what makes the movie queer? Aside from its being directed by queer directors and containing an all-queer cast, Burdenski and Bockwinkel believe the central facet of The Great Disappointment narrative is a core emotion many in the LGBTQ+ can identify with, “yearning for a better world.”
