The World Drops Dead

Brandon Colvin · 2024 · 71 minutes

WORLD PREMIERE

Claire struggles to cope as the shock of her father’s suicide ripples through her small Quaker community. Desperate to reunite with the only person who seemed to understand her, she reaches out to her father across the boundary of death.

Programmer’s Note

“In silence which is active, the Inner Light begins to glow — a tiny spark. For the flame to be kindled and to grow, subtle argument and the glamour of our emotions must be stilled.”

In the opening minutes of The World Drops Dead, Claire (Yumna Jane) pages through her father’s copy of Quaker faith and practice, pausing for a moment on these lines from the chapter on “Approaches to God — worship and prayer.” Claire and Mark (Brandon Colvin) share a mostly-unspoken emotional bond, so this moment of connection — both of them reading and contemplating the same sentences — feels strangely intimate. When Claire tries to coax her father into revealing more of his inner life, he seems capable of offering only a loving but silent smile.

By taking seriously the ecstasy of spiritual experience, The World Drops Dead joins the lineage of films by directors like Carl Th. Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, and, more recently, Paul Schrader (especially First Reformed, 2017). Colvin uses old-school tools and tricks of cinema — shifts in lighting, portrait-like close-ups, practical effects made from everyday objects — to manifest Claire’s desperate desire for transcendence. It’s a film that, like Quaker practice, prizes stillness, attention, and mystery.

Note: The World Drops Dead includes a depiction of suicide.

Writer/director Brandon Colvin, producers Pisie Hocheim, Tony Oswalt, and Nora Stone, and lead animator Lauren Ashley Eriksson will introduce the screening and participate in a Q&A.

FOLLOWED BY:

When the Moon Returns

Brandon Colvin · 2024 · 16 minutes

Persecuted and hunted by Christianizing forces, young Deirdre and her clan eke out an itinerant existence in the forest. When the threat grows more imminent, Deidre’s mother, Brigid, is led by a ritualistic vision to make a transformative choice: she offers herself as holy sacrifice. Many years later, Deirdre and her father, Orson, are all that remain of the clan. Deirdre and Orson embark upon a harrowing and hallucinatory journey to find Brigid, one that will lead them across the threshold of death and far beyond.

Programmer’s Note

Colvin designed these films to screen together. They share similar themes and several cast members.

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Brandon Colvin is a writer, director, and producer from Kentucky. His previous films include the features Frames (2012), Sabbatical (2014), and A Dim Valley (2020). He is an Assistant Professor of film production at The University of Alabama.