LEAP FROM FAITH
Latter Day Conversion BY JOSHUA SPERLING
An Oberlin professor looks back at his elder self the problem of the persistence of identity is one of those metaphysical puzzles that afflicts philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Why should it make sense to say that I am the same person today that I was 10 years ago, or that I will be 10 years from now? Behavioral economists routinely demonstrate how little any of us seems to value future wellbeing over present reward, while in our private lives it is common to marvel at the mysteries of our own past behavior and relationships. Religious converts often speak of rebirth, recovering addicts of going clean, political activists of getting woke. For Geoff Pingree, Oberlin professor of cinema studies and English, the metamorphosis at the heart of his youth has been more difficult to describe, a source of self-reflection, ambivalence, and, most recently, a moving new autobiographical film, The Return of Elder Pingree—Memoir of a Departed Mormon. 16
At 19, instead of going straight through college, Pingree spent two years on a Mormon mission in Guatemala. The experience was formative, though not in the way the church intended. On returning stateside, Pingree began to drift away from his faith, eventually leaving the church in his 20s (though he still maintains good relations with his largely Utah-based family). During the following years, he studied for a PhD at the University of Chicago, becoming a teacher and documentary filmmaker. Since 2001, he has taught at Oberlin, where he mentors film students and oversees StoryLens, a nonprofit documentary collective staffed by soon-to-be and recent graduates. Pingree has already produced several well-received documentaries, including The Foreigner’s Home, a lyrical portrait of Toni Morrison made with Oberlin colleague Rian Brown-Orso, but The Return of Elder Pingree is by far his most personal project to date, and took 15 years to finish. Initially reluctant to tell his own story, he was compelled by friends, colleagues, and a fateful trip to the Maine Media Workshops. In 2006, Pingree hired a small film crew to travel with him to Guatemala, where he hoped to reconnect with the people who were closest to him some 20 years earlier. The
resulting film is a series of remarkably candid reunions. We meet Miriam Sosa, a former friend and potential convert who was also the focus of secret romantic longings; Federico Obando, an older colleague and local schoolteacher; and Doña Amelia, an aging landlady who cares for missionaries and cannot bear to learn that the older Pingree has since fallen away from God. Though many of these encounters are uncomfortable, they are always heartfelt. “You have a special place in our hearts,” a former convert tells the older Pingree. “Whatever you might have done in that time you did it believing in it then, and that makes it valid.” At times The Return of Elder Pingree can resemble the many personal quest documentaries that emerged in the early 2000s with the rise of digital video. What sets it apart from these films is its candor and complexity. Drawing on private journals, personal photographs, and voice-recorded “letters” sent to his twin brother, Pingree’s film is a window onto an experience—the two years countless young Mormons spend abroad— all but absent in contemporary cinema. What do these immaculately dressed, well-groomed teenagers actually think and feel about their work in distant lands? With echoes of James Joyce, Pingree’s documentary is a searching portrait of a
COURTESY OF GEOFF PINGREE
Thought Process