Daneen Akers and Stephen Eyer today released the first installment of
a new ten-part series of short documentaries called “Outspoken” that
features stories of LGBT+ Adventists. This is the third major project
for the husband-and-wife team dealing with the intersection of
sexuality, gender and the Adventist faith.
Their first film, the feature-length documentary “Seventh-Gay
Adventists” (Watchfire Films, 2012) followed the lives and spiritual
journeys of three Seventh-day Adventists in same-sex relationships as
they struggled with tensions between the distinct cultural markers of
their faith community and their identities as lesbian or gay
individuals. After screening at film festivals and in and around
Adventist communities, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray,
followed by a wider online release.
Akers and Eyer followed “Seventh-Gay Adventists” in 2014 with “Enough
Room at the Table,” a film intended to model for the Adventist Church a
process the filmmakers called “the sacred act of listening.” “Enough
Room” brought together a diverse group of Adventist pastors, thought
leaders and congregants—some LGBT+, some not—to talk with one another
over the course of a weekend retreat. The film that documented those
conversations provided a framework for congregations that might have had
preliminary talks about homosexuality and sexual identities, but that
might have lacked resources for moving the conversations forward.
I spoke with Daneen Akers about this new project—how it came to be and what links it to and separates it from past projects.
“This new series is a shift for us,” Akers told me. “We’ve journeyed
from thinking that we as allies are doing something helpful to realizing
that we are the ones who are deeply blessed by getting to witness and
share the stories of our LGBT friends.”
The “Outspoken” series of short films will be released exclusively
online on the first Friday evening of each month, starting today. More
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