• Courtesy Of Paper Horse Pictures
• A mother relives precious moments with her child in the powerful short "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes."

Summer blockbuster season reigns supreme, but this week I checked out two films made or conceived close to home.

Back in 2012, I wrote about Falling Overnight, an indie drama cowritten by and starring Shelburne native Parker Croft. Since then, the part-time Vermont resident has acted on shows such as "Big Little Lies" and directed music videos and shorts. Croft's most recent project, the 20-minute speculative drama "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes," has played at festivals around the world and won two awards. It makes its Vermont premiere this Saturday, July 27, 6 p.m., at the Vermont Film Festival in Woodstock.

Executive-produced by Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin, "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes" begins from the same premise as the 2021 sci-fi thriller Reminiscence: a drug that allows people to relive their memories in immersive detail. But the result here is much more memorable. By narrowing their focus to the psychological effects of such a drug, cowriters Croft and Aaron Golden create an exquisite, chilling mini-drama.

Though the story appears to take place in the near future, the writers eschew exposition in favor of plunging us straight into a relatable situation: a support group for people who are fighting their dependence on the new drug. Amesten can cause harrowing mental deterioration, but why people take it becomes clear when Lila (Laura Coover) speaks up. Her young son died 10 months ago; the last time she saw him was seven months ago, in a drug-induced memory.

At home, Lila tries to work through her grief organically, preparing a cake and gifts for her late son's upcoming birthday. But the allure of a real-feeling memory is too strong. Lila succumbs to the pull of the past, laying the groundwork for a clever and disturbing conclusion.

This is the sort of story that could be schmaltzy if overplayed. But the naturalistic dialogue and performances in "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes," especially Coover's, bring us straight to the core of Lila's grief. When Lila relives a memory of flying a model plane with her son, she doesn't shed tears. Instead, we see the restrained joy she takes in revisiting the ordinary moments of being a mom — the kind of moments that people tend not to value until they're gone.

Zackaree Sandberg's cinematography bathes the memory sequence in a golden glow, almost as if it were advertising the fictional drug. But there are dark undercurrents in Mandy Hoffman's score, and we soon learn that every impossible reunion has its price.

"As Easy As Closing Your Eyes" left me wanting more; a theme this rich and provocative could easily be material for a feature film. Regardless of whether we see a longer version one day, Croft is a filmmaker to watch.

Unlike "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes," Pomp & Circumstance was shot mostly locally, in 2021. Its slice of Burlington student life comes complete with Gen Z-brand irony, street grit and a very literary scene in South End bookstore Speaking Volumes.

Pitched as a "freewheeling, episodic comedy," this roughly hourlong 2023 film from former Burlingtonian Adrian Anderson and Patrick Gray won the Audience Award for Best First-Time Filmmaker at the Tallahassee Film Festival. Though Pomp & Circumstance hasn't yet screened in Vermont, it will soon be streaming on the platform NoBudge, which showcases young indie filmmakers.

Shot on 16mm film for a mellow, retro, highly Instagrammable look, Pomp & Circumstance is nonetheless clearly set in present-day Burlington. It opens with one of the student protagonists, Charlie (Ben Loftus), losing his phone and keys to muggers. Declaring that "I think my brief interaction with poverty has put my solipsism on trial," he decides to try living unhoused. Meanwhile, his friend Thomas (Noah Brockman) attempts unsuccessfully to woo women with literary quotes, and Marie (Isabel Zaia) makes experimental documentaries about the restless city around her.

Pomp & Circumstance barely has enough connective tissue for a plot, but it harks back to the experimental films of the '60s in its slacker charm and offbeat humor. The (sort of) antagonist is an adjunct architecture instructor (Patrick J. Malone) who runs for Burlington mayor on a platform of aesthetic purity, promising to spiff up the wardrobes of the unhoused and purge the city of karaoke and Elvis impersonators. Naturally, this sort of sacrilege doesn't go over well with some Burlingtonians.

The film unfolds in bite-size chapters, some of which are stand-alone shorts with their own distinct styles. Pomp & Circumstance suggests a fever dream that a humanities undergrad might have after cramming for finals while pounding too many espressos at Muddy Waters. Or, to use its own language, it's an interesting act of cultural bricolage. The jargon- and allusion-rich dialogue comes thick and fast — all part of the self-deprecating joke.

The film isn't without earnestness, though. In its own way, like "As Easy As Closing Your Eyes," it's about the power of the past. The young characters repeatedly express their fear that originality in art and culture is impossible because everything has already been done, perhaps even back in the 20th century. One student speaks of having been born after the point that certain scholars declared the "end of history."

Has there ever been a thoughtful college student of any era who didn't feel crushed by the weight of the past? For older viewers, Pomp & Circumstance may provoke nostalgia — but also moments of wry recognition.