Out of Annapolis (2010) is a documentary directed by Steve Clark Hall. The film is a collection of interviews with ten former Annapolis students, interspersed with some footage of the academy grounds and activities.
All of these men and women planned to undergo four years of military-style education, and most of them graduated. None of them is in the military now, because they were either forced to leave Annapolis, or forced out of the military, because of their sexual orientation.
What's amazing to me is that many of them--probably all of them--would have made fine officers. The wanted to be fine officers. They love the military. None of them appears to have made the connection that an organization that rejects them solely on the basis of sexual orientation might not be worth serving for 20 or 30 years.
None of them appears to say, "I could have spent four years at a university where I didn't have to wear a uniform, undergo hazing, or accept the top-down military decision model. At a university like that I could have been openly gay or lesbian and no one would have cared."
I think it's a matter of self-selection. People who enter the military academies embrace the authoritarian military mindset, and so what they feel is regret, not outrage, about what happened to them.
We saw this film at the Cinema Theatre as part of the marvelous ImageOut Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. The movie will work equally well on a small or large screen.
