A Catskills filmmaker is bringing a deeply personal story to the Big Eddy Film Festival this weekend in Narrowsburg.

Kansas, 1989, a short film by Clayton Dean Smith, is set in the Midwest in the late 1980s. It follows a 16-year-old teenager on the verge of coming out and a dangerous night that becomes a turning point in his life.

Smith says the film is based on real events and grew out of looking back at experiences that can take on new meaning years later.

“I was interested in telling the story and kind of painting a picture of someone’s interiority and someone’s lived experience of being on the verge of becoming a bigger person of themselves,” Smith told Radio Catskill.

The film was shot in Kansas City with a Kansas City cast and crew, including at locations that were meaningful to Smith, such as his old high school.

And the setting matters. Smith was 16 in 1989, and he says the Midwest was an important part of shaping who he became.

“I can draw a line from me to then and from me now to then,” he said.

Smith now lives in the Catskills, where he sees some of the same sense of community and curiosity that he remembers from where he grew up.

He says that’s part of what makes showing Kansas, 1989 at Big Eddy particularly meaningful.

“Movies are great,” Smith said. “But in a physical space to share those experiences is when you then are building community and building culture.”

Smith hopes the film also encourages audiences to think about what they can’t see in the lives of people around them — and what might be happening beneath the surface.

Smith is also developing a feature-length version of the story, expanding on the characters, community and experiences behind the short.

Kansas, 1989 screens Saturday, Sept. 26, as part of Big Eddy’s Rural Magic shorts program at Narrowsburg Union.

The Big Eddy Film Festival is a financial supporter of Radio Catskill.