New documentary on LGBT student athletes

From a review of Out for the Long Run, a documentary on young LGBT athletes, which features Gay Games Ambassadors Greg Louganis and Billy Bean, in Compete Magazine:

If one picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words is a feature length documentary worth? For a number of U.S. gay athletes – two high school seniors, two college freshmen and a former high school student no longer playing sports, as well as the families of these athletes, a couple of adult Olympic Gold Medalists, three coaches, several straight teammates and one entire high school population – the answer is “priceless.” These are the very real life cast members of the feature documentary, Out for the Long Run. Following a year in the life of these courageous high school and college student athletes who have come out to family, friends, classmates and coaches, it tells their personal stories in a way that honors their varied experiences of being “out” athletes.

Reading a Los Angeles Times article three years ago about the courage it takes young athletes to come out is what prompted Tragoidia Moving Pictures founder, Scott Bloom (a high school wrestler in his own right) and his partner, Larry Diamond, to make the Out for the Long Run documentary. While work as a professional freelance editor for feature documentaries, situation comedies, film trailers and reality television pays the bills, Bloom’s true passion is filming features such as this one that advocate for the GLBT community. In his words, filming incredible and in spirational stories of people is what feeds his soul.

While the documentary isn’t all filled with horror stories, it’s also not all sunshine and sweetness. There is, in particular, a painfully honest yet touching conversation with the father of one of the college athletes about his struggle accepting his son’s sexual orientation. For all members of the GLBT community, coming out is an im portant rite of passage that finally allows you to be honest with others about who you are. But that honesty also leaves you vulnerable. Coming out can carry with it heavy physical, mental and emotional penalties that often lead to drug and alcohol addictions, even suicide, in an attempt to escape the pain. Yet not being honest about who you are is its own particular prison of silence. It requires you to live a lie, to be eternally uncomfortable in your own skin so that others can continue being comfortable in theirs without requiring them to change their awareness of others.

Keep reading HERE.