Shrewsbury short film hits festivals

By Gordon Dritschilo
Staff Writer
Annalise Lockhart turned her childhood stomping grounds into a haunting directorial debut.

“Inheritance,” a short film shot in Shrewsbury in 2019, is making the festival rounds — including a planned appearance in late August at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival. Lockhart, 29, a New York City-based filmmaker with a long list of assistant director credits, filmed the short at the cabin her mother, a former Spring Lake Ranch employee, purchased in the mid-’80s and that her extended family uses as a vacation home.

“It was cool to have people I’ve worked with come in and bring different ideas to the space,” she said. “For me, it was just a chance to make something I really cared about. I made it with people I’ve worked with on other projects as an assistant director. It was fun to flex those director muscles.”

Lockhart said the community was helpful and welcoming during the five days of filming as the cast and crew had to adjust to working without cell signals or Wi-Fi.

“It was a little isolated, but we sort of planned it so we had everything we needed,” Lockhart said. “It ended up being a tranquil, focused set.”

The story focuses on a woman who receives the deed to her family’s Vermont cabin on her birthday. At the same time, she inherits the attention of spirits that were already tormenting her father and brother. The spirits subject the family to little more than unpleasant stares, and the film lacks any sort of big-action climax, but the short is infused with a sense of creeping dread.

“It was a way to track the metaphor I was trying to draw for the film, the cumulative effect of being watched or judged,” she said, adding that people of color frequently find themselves under unwelcome scrutiny as they just try to go about their day-to-day lives.

Discussion around racial harassment in the local area in recent years and the film’s setting make it tempting to read it as a specific commentary on Vermont, but Lockhart has said it was inspired by more of a global experience than a local one.

“Vermont, to me, has been one of the most accepting environments I’ve been in,” she said. “The comment I wanted to make was how, in general, Black families and families of color have had trouble being at peace in these tranquil settings. … Even in the best scenarios, the unfortunate past of the country still lingers.”

“Inheritance” has shown at the Atlanta, Maryland, Riverrun and Palm Springs film festivals, taking the prize for best U.S. short at the latter. Other planned August appearances include the BlackStar Film Festival in in Philadelphia and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, both of which will make the film available online for a limited time.

The exact date of the Middlebury showing has yet to be determined, but the festival there takes place Aug. 25-29. Meanwhile, Lockhart said she is “slowly but surely” writing a feature-length film.

“It’s about a woman who is trying to save her father’s life,” she said. “They both will go to any length to do so.”

gordon.dritschilo @rutlandherald.com