Kelly McCormack’s Sundance Short ‘How Brief,’ Inspired by the Music of Vanished Singer Connie Converse, Unveils Teaser (EXCLUSIVE)

A new preview has debuted for "How Brief," a short film from writer-director Kelly McCormack that takes its creative cues from the enigmatic 1950s folk musician Connie Converse. The movie, which premiered globally at Sundance and is scheduled for the Manchester Film Festival, stars Tess Degenstein—who also wrote the script—alongside Tatiana Maslany ("She-Hulk") and Gray Powell.

McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker and actor recognized for her feature "Sugar Baby" and roles in series like "A League of Their Own," frames the project as a cinematic "disappearing act." Set in 1962, it tracks a deeply unsettled woman during her last hours in her family home. The plot intertwines the writings of women who chose to vanish, using Converse's music to probe a central dilemma: at what point does fading into nothingness become a more appealing prospect than continuing to live?

The film pays direct tribute to Connie Converse, a largely forgotten pioneer of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Converse is now considered by many music historians to have created the archetype of the modern solo singer-songwriter, performing deeply personal original songs with just an acoustic guitar years before the style was popularized by artists like Bob Dylan. In a move that cemented her legend, she deliberately left her life behind in 1974 and was never seen or heard from again. "She crafted one profoundly haunting album in the 1950s and then orchestrated her own permanent exit," McCormack explained, adding that the concise short film format felt like the right vessel to honor such an act of "self-determination and self-erasure."

For McCormack, the driving force behind the narrative was not to diagnose a reason for disappearance, but to examine the societal conditions that could make it feel like a logical, even liberating, option. "The question that propelled this work was not why a woman would choose to disappear, but rather, why wouldn't she?" the director stated. The production, shepherded by producers Ariel Bond, Lucy McNulty, and Jill Orsten with editor Kane Stewart, was a deliberately slow and careful process. The goal was to encapsulate both the fear and the strange allure of its theme, building toward a reflection of Converse's own musings on life's transient beauty.

This exploration of erased artistic history resonates strongly in the current cultural moment, coinciding with renewed efforts to rediscover and preserve the work of marginalized creators. The film thus operates on dual levels: as a poignant homage to a specific lost artist, and as a broader meditation on the voids left in our cultural memory. It challenges audiences to consider what is lost when a unique voice is silenced, whether by circumstance or by choice.