Alden Peters is Coming Out at 2015 Newfest

By Andrew Tess

A heartwarming coming out process is candidly explored by Alden Peters in his personal film, befittigngly titled Coming Out. 

Featured in this year's Newfest, the film depicts Alden’s life as he is telling suspecting and unsuspecting friends and family members that he is gay. 

Inspired by Tyler Clementi’s tragic suicide, the young Rutgers student who jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after being secretly filmed having sex with another man by his roommate, Peters’ story in Coming Out is a means of reclaiming the revelation of being gay. 

The film opens with a long shot of his computer’s camera — a daunting green light that flickers as soon as the iMac’s camera is turned on not unlike the great green light in The Great Gatsby. 

Peters looks to reclaim ownership on how and when an LGBT-identifying individual will reveal his or her sexuality to loved ones. He often visits the site of Tyler’s death and describes the late Rutgers student as a major inspiration for himself and for making the film. 

The interesting dichotomy of Internet reality and IRL reality — Alden's contemplation on how to reveal his sexuality online via Facebook appears more difficult than revealing to his conservative America family — is explored in the film as well. Alden feels the burden of revealing himself to his fellow twenty-something year old generation and expresses his distain for the notion that it “It Gets Better."

“I remember back then thinking that this was like the biggest deal. But now it’s like ‘Yeah I came out, whatever.’ And I think that’s why there is this tendency for people that are already out to say 'it gets better’ or ‘don’t worry about it, it’ll get better.’ But they forget that in that moment there’s nothing more terrifying, there’s nothing more prevalent and nothing more imminent than coming out the closet and what does that mean.”

Ultimately, it does get better for Alden and he uses to the film to express his coming out story and the stories of other LGBT-identifiers. They mutually agree, there is no one way of coming out.

Coming Outhas its NY premiere Sunday October 25 at 5:30 p.m. Watch the trailer below: