Not long ago, Michelle West asked her Aunt Carol for some family stories. What her aunt then told her became the basis for West's fascinating new short film "Lineage," which is set in a more harrowing version of 1933 than we normally see on film, and illustrates how much people, and especially women, must hide their secrets to survive. The short, which just played the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival, builds mystery and power as we realize the characters' capacity for compartmentalization: Secrets are locked away in a trunk, never meant to be opened.

West, who wrote and directed the film, also plays a mother struggling to hold her family together during in the grimmest days of the Great Depression. References to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the book, not the movie, which hadn't come out yet) add to the sense of earthy eeriness that pervades the short. "Lineage," like L.

Frank Baum's novel, has a curious blend of sadness and hope that is hard to shake. By the end, it turns out to be an entirely different film than the one you may have thought you were watching at the beginning. We asked West about the silencing of 1930s filmmakers, gaining experience in a wide range of film jobs, and getting the past right.

Michelle West on Making 'Lineage' Writer-director-actor Michelle West works with her lead, Cailin Peluso, on "Lineage." Hazel Mae Pictures MovieMaker: Can you talk at all about the events that inspired this? Michelle West: About six years ago at a family reunion, I asked my Aunt Carol to share family stories with me while everyone else went sightseeing.

I have a disjointed family spread far and wide, and I'd never learned much about my family tree. She agreed, and while knitting, she told me how my grandparents met, what they did for a living, and the challenging home lives that inspired them to marry as teenagers and take on the world together. Aunt Carol also told me something Nana only shared closer to her death — that as a young girl, Nana found a fetus in a trunk in the living room.

The rumors declared Nana's mother as superstitious and using black magic to get pregnant with a boy... You know, the standard patriarchal story: Women are crazy and only boys have value. But as Aunt Carol shared more familial stories about abortions, miscarriages, alcoholism, poverty, gang affiliations, gambling, and infidelity, I started connecting the dots.

The fetus in the trunk wasn't about conjuring blessings, it was about burying secrets. Secrets too painful to fully let go of. Secrets that the women in my family had been forced to carry in silence for generations.

So, I decided to break that cycle. Ultimately, Lineage is a series of true events woven into a single fictional narrative to honor the stories of forgotten women not only in my family, but in all of ours. MovieMaker: Because so many Hays Code-era movies were censored, we sometimes get a clean-cut view of the past, and especially the 1930s.

But this feels like a really honest take on how mean life could be during the Depression. Do you feel that you told the truth about life at that time more honestly than the flms of the era could? Michelle West: The power players in the 1930s who censored and skewed media toward Christian ideals after industry consolidation (sound familiar?) not only sanitized content, but also brought an end to women's filmmaking for decades.

Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, and Mae West, for example, were profitable pioneers of cinema until a male studio head deemed them inappropriate and ended their careers. Because of this, we missed out on so many vital stories by and about women. Unfortunately, this issue isn't confined to the Hays Code era.

Only 8% of feature-length films are directed by women today. The 2022 documentary Brainwashed: Sex, Camera, Power by Nina Menkes demonstrates in great detail how even modern films frame women and women's experiences in ways that influence pay disparity and misogyny in our culture today. Michelle West on the "Lineage" set.

Hazel Mae Pictures Much more work remains to ensure stories representing all races, genders, and orientations are told in the present, regardless of the time period they depict. I don't want to wait 90 years before the stories of today are told honestly. MovieMaker: It was also striking how relevant so many elements of this film felt to 2026 — the male gambling epidemic, predatory behavior, the restrictions on bodily autonomy.

Did you want it to be an allegory for today? To recover a story from the 1930s? Or to make it timeless? Michelle West: As a segue from the last question, it's pretty wild to reflect on how far we've come in the last century regarding equality, technology, and awareness — all under the guise of improving life and overall happiness.

Yet, in so many ways, we struggle to face our demons, so the past repeats itself. Thankfully, art is a powerful mirror. The goal is for films like "Lineage" is to bring awareness to areas of our culture that still need hea