05/26/2026
As part of Switch Wicked’s anniversary week celebration, this special edition of Film Club will feature a screening of the 2004 award-winning documentary viewing the 2004 award-winning documentary Wamego: Making Movies Anywhere, which follows the Balderson family in Wamego, Kansas.
Directed by Steve Balderson, this film highlights that you can create something special right here in your own community. After the film, we will be joined by Clark Balderson, producer, for a talk and Q&A following the film.
Free and 18+ event.
A Father's View from Behind the Camera - A statement by Clark Balderson, producer:
"Stephen Balderson showed up at my door at 22 years old, fresh out of CalArts, and told me he was going to make a film on his credit cards. I told him that was a terrible idea — and then I helped him do it anyway... but not with credit cards!
That negotiation between his creative instinct and my business pragmatism became the working relationship you'll glimpse in Wamego: Making Movies Anywhere. He was the artist; I was the one making sure the lights stayed on. What the documentary captures is something rare: a genuinely talented filmmaker betting everything on his vision, in the middle of Kansas, with the whole improbable enterprise unfolding in real time.
Firecracker, the film being made in this documentary, earned 3.5 stars from Roger Ebert and a place on his 2005 Best Films list. But long before any of that, I watched a boy of eight talk my father out of his VHS camera and start telling stories. Nothing that followed surprised me.
I hope you'll enjoy the film — and stay for the conversation."
— Clark Balderson, Manhattan, Kansas
