Brandon Colvin

SABBATICAL // 2014 // USA // 72 minutes // 1.33:1 Directed & Written by Brandon Colvin // Produced by Brandon Colvin, Tony Oswald & Michael Sellers // Cinematography by Aaron Granat // Editing by Tony Oswald // Sound by Matt Baker & Jarrett DePasqaule // Executive Produced by Mike Sickels 2014 Wisconsin Film Festival // 2014 New Orleans Film Festival // 2015 Beloit International Film Festival // 2015 Eastern Oregon Film Festival // 2015 Western Kentucky Film Festival // 2015 Kinoscope Film Series (The New School) Synopsis: Ben Hardin (Robert Longstreet), a middle-aged scholar, returns home to care for his ill mother during his scheduled writing sabbatical. While home, faced with the remnants of a life he left behind, Ben's relationships with estranged friends and family -- his mother, his brother, his ex-lover, and his old friend -- are tested. "The honed-in, supremely focused attitude that it emits is reminiscent of master craftsmen such as Ingmar Bergman or Robert Bresson . . . . SABBATICAL stands tall as an outlier of the micro-budget scene." - Christopher Bell, IndieWIRE "Masterfully economic in both narrative and framing. As auspicious and acutely realized as any Bresson film. . . . One of the three best undistributed films of 2014." - Peter Labuza, RogerEbert.com "A film of stylistic poise, honest performance, and astonishing control. . . . SABBATICAL also has one of the most astounding final shots you will see this year." - Jake Smith, Madison Film Forum

**Watch our new feature, SABBATICAL, via Vimeo On Demand: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/30346** A young filmmaker uses his camera to transform the banality of his hometown into art. When a friend goes missing, however, his footage exposes a disturbing mystery … one he might be inventing. Kentucker Audley of NoBudgeFilms.com says: "There’s a distinct vibe at work: stilted performances, deliberate pace, formal construction. . . . Excellent lead performances carry the film effortlessly. I knew nothing about the filmmakers but was drawn in & ultimately impressed." Craig Keller of the No Budge Newsletter, Cinemasparagus and Masters of Cinema says: ". . . plot elements of Antonioni . . . evocations of Lynch-esque sound design and characterization . . . mannerist model-performance style like in Bresson . . . . This young-adult-art-film might have been titled THE OUTSIDERS if not for that fact that the teen protagonists are so circumscribed by images, their fate predetermined by the perfunctory mystery genre: the frames of images, frames as pens of liberty and volition, frames of spectacles ultimately blood-spattered when seeing is too much and not enough." Don Simpson of Smells Like Screen Spirit says: "FRAMES is a film that immerses itself fully into the falseness of cinema, as Colvin plays with the notion of performance and the cinematic representations of reality. . . . Of course, this means that the audience must acclimate to the cold and calculated tone of the film; otherwise, FRAMES could be totally misconstrued as a horrible film. Hopefully the audience will recognize the true genius of FRAMES, which is how Colvin uses Peter’s idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking to deconstruct his own production." Amy R. Handler of Film Threat says: "FRAMES is a movie that should definitely be seen more than once, much like the works of Godard and Antonioni. It should also not be the least surprising if this strange little shocker achieves cult classic status, as each viewer sets out to discover the film’s Holy Grail." Jay Sizemore of The Missing Slate says: "Prepare to be manipulated and challenged by a film in ways unlike any you may have experienced while watching one. . . . [FRAMES] is a multi-layered, complex film, and it might be difficult for some viewers, but it is worth the challenge, like any difficult puzzle, to see the entire work of art once it is all put together." James Hansen of Out 1 Film Journal says: "Over the course of the film, Frames quietly inflates its parameters, expanding from a smart, eclectic, yet openly reference-heavy pastiche pivoting around flattened affect, emotiveless emotion, and apathetic mystery before shifting towards a somewhat brooding, deliberately paced, atmospheric vision of contemporary horror." Tip if you like and head over to www.sabbatical-mossgarden.com to find out more about Brandon's next project Sabbatical!