Film Review #166: Unlearning, Relearning (SYFF)
Finding the Intersection between Queerness and Religion:
Unlearning, Relearning (SYFF)
It's always special when you watch a film that cuts right to your heart. That was an experience I had with Unlearning, Relearning (2023), a selection from the inaugural Singapore Youth Film Festival (SYFF). The short documentary interviews three queer individuals who speak about their experiences growing up in christian environments. Centering around the intersection between religion and queerness, watching it for the first time really hit home. I had the pleasure of speaking to the film's director, Wayne Lim, about the process of making the film and what it meant to him.
The birth of the film began during an exchange semester in Austin, Texas. There, Wayne attended a class named, 'Death and Documentary'. "We all had to make documentaries centered on death in whatever way we wanted to interpret the word," he explained. But that was just the external prompt. "At the same time, I had been trying to figure out my identity and my beliefs for quite a while, so I thought it was a good opportunity to use a project to try and find some answers by talking to people around me who were also questioning their beliefs." That was the internal prompt, which clearly comes through during the film.
With that, work began on the film. Wayne put out a call to his friends, looking to talk to people who grew up religious, but didn't believe in it anymore, people who strayed from religion after feeling strongly compelled by it, or even people who were just confused, but still kept religion somewhere in the back of their minds. The initially explored range was broader than simply the Christian faith. "I actually didn't limit it to any religion or any belief at first. But as I cut it together with the time constraints and limits that I had, I arrived at this more focused tension between the Christian faith and queerness."
I was raised to never really consider an intersection between queerness and religion to be a possibility; they always had to be at war with each other in some way or another. Watching this shattered that belief and built up one that was more hopeful, which is akin to the film's very title. I asked Wayne how he found that very core of the film.
"It started with just me having been lost when it came to religion for quite a while, and therefore asking many ‘why’ questions. Why do people walk away from religion? And how do people who walk away from religion reconcile this – do they still fear the afterlife? And if their fears stem from a sense of a certain consequence from what their religion teaches, then why isn't that fear enough to bring them back to their religion? That obviously stemmed from a bit of my own experience and my own questions."
The last sentence brought up the powerful way the film tapped into the interpersonal experience of queer individuals everywhere who were raised or had spent much time in a religious environment. The questions posed rang true to myself, which deepened my connection to the film.
All of this leads to a frustrating truth: the possibility for conversation surrounding this subject is, unfortunately, suppressed. During the making of the film, Wayne had concerns that the film would not even make it to a Singaporean audience, with even a potential ban looming over the film's local fate.
Fortunately, the Short Circuit Film Festival came back that year, allowing the film to receive a local platform, but of course there were complications that came along. "Just one day before the screening, I saw the R21 rating." The surreal experience of seeing the film receive the severest age rating could not leave him. "But by the time we got to SYFF, it had really settled in for me. When the film screened at the Objectifs FreshTake! programme, I told the audience, 'Yes, it's about this intersection, but I think I did it in the least confrontational way I could have. I literally drew caterpillars!' It is sad, I guess, but it's something that I was sort of resigned to, like I knew it would happen."
During the interview, Wayne said something that has only begun to stand out to me as I write this. "Filmmaking can be a research method; I could throw a research question to the people around me to try and get my answers through their experiences as well. At that point in time, I still couldn't fully articulate my beliefs and what I felt my identity was. But synthesising these voices created an end product that still somehow included my own assertions, just with me being the filmmaker who pieced all of them together."
As this article is being written, I'm beginning to realise that a similar effect is happening to me right now. Through the voice of Wayne, and the three subjects of his documentary, I am now able to express a part of myself that I cannot exactly put to words. That is one of the most meaningful revelations for the both of us, through the film and this piece on it, that there is a power to reach out to people; to express ourselves, through the voices of others. It brings us all together, which is something that Unlearning, Relearning has definitely done.
The film can be found on Wayne's website:
www.waynelimtl.com
Find Wayne on Instagram:
@waaaaayne_
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About the author: Amadeus is a filmmaker who has loved cinema as far back as he could remember. Most of his time is spent in theatres, otherwise he is writing about the films playing in them.
This review is published as part of *SCAPE’s Film Critics Lab: A Writing Mentorship Programme, with support from Singapore Film Society.
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