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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014
Free State Festival features student-made film
AMELIA ARVESEN
news@kansan.com
In Southwestern Kansas, inside an old, dusty house with floral wallpaper that's curling at the seams, a girl sits in a rocking chair. She's faced with a decision that will change her life.
University film student Patrick Clement will be premiering his short film "Somewhere Between Freedom and Protection, Kansas" at the Free State Festival on Saturday.
It's July 2013 and Patrick Clement watches nearby as the scene unfolds. He's directing the film he wrote, "Somewhere Between Freedom and Protection, Kansas."
KELSEY WEAVER/KANSAN
Along with other featured films, the 20-minute short film premieres in the Free State Festival on Saturday at 12 p.m.
Clement, a 34-year-old film student at the University, said it's about a young girl who must choose between staying with her ill grandmother and following a scholarship that will take her away from the small town her
"The exodus of young people is a huge story and it affects everybody in the whole region," Clement said. "It's kind of sad but it's also just the reality."
family founded.
The film is a meditation on young people's desire for conflict, to determine boundaries and overcome challenges, he said. The thought came to him while he was working as the editor at the Kiowa County Signal in the rural community of Greensburg, where he witnessed the migration affect the entire town.
Clement, originally from Boston, pursued filmmaking in Hollywood and even worked as an extra on a few shows such as Dexter and Ugly Betty. He worked for The Discovery Channel on the documentary series "Greensburg" after the 2007 tornado and met his girlfriend, Alanna Goodman. In 2011, he moved to live with her in Kansas. Throughout filming, he drew from his experiences as an outsider looking into rural life.
The young girl and main character is performed by Brittnee Hill, a recent graduate from Pratt High School.
"It really does show that struggle from moving out of small-town Kansas and moving on into something bigger," Hill said. "I would say he definitely captures that in the film."
The production of the film has taken Clement almost a year to complete. He said he hasn't stopped working since but it's work he wants to be doing for the rest of his life.
"When was the last time I was bored? Like genuinely, I can't think of sitting around and being like 'Oh, I don't have anything to do,'" Clement said. "I wonder what that's like. I'd probably go crazy."
He's a self-described workaholic. Right now, he's producing another short film with Ryan 'Doug' Douglass for the Wild West Film Fest, writing
a biography about a photographer from Western Kansas, filming videos
SEE FILM PAGE 9