Can I Write a Memoir, but Make it Film?

Come with me while I find out!

This is not an album cover, but I think it would make a great one.

Those of you who know me know that the last few years have been less than ideal for me.

Like, a lot less.

I lost both of my parents unexpectedly within three years of each other, and now my sister and I have to clear out and sell the house we grew up in.

Back in June, I wrote a post about alchemizing grief. Now I’m putting that post into practice.

Which brings me to this — I have a new project in the works.

It’s a personal, lyrical hybrid documentary. The working title is (surprise surprise) Grief Alchemy Project.

I’ll share my logline with you:

In Grief Alchemy Project, a first generation filmmaker intertwines her ancestors’ parallel stories of exile from Sindh and Ukraine with the process of selling the house she grew up in – her late parents’ old Victorian in suburban New Jersey – transmuting personal grief into a cinematic ritual spanning continents and generations: a meditation on home and homeland, memory, and the inherited trauma of displacement.

It’s going to be a mix of present day verité footage, historical and personal archival — think old family photos, slides from the 1970s/80s, super 8 footage, & VHS tapes — and something I’m calling “film as ritual” (more on this in future posts) tied together with some (hopefully) poetic voice over.

I’m envisioning it as a kind of memoir, but in film form.

We shot one day in October and I’m planning three more shoot days before April.

This film, by its very nature, is what producing icon and FilmStack architect Ted Hope would call “NonDē,” as in non-dependent. The name might be hard to type, but Ted’s take on the principles behind it are easy to understand:

The sustainability of the art, artist, and ecosystem is the primary goal of NonDē.

We will no longer neglect — as So-Called “Indie” Film (aka SCIF) has — what is necessary to build to make our cinema ecosystem work well for all participants. NonDē commits to the improvement of the product, process, environment, and experience through delivering a regular cadence of operational improvements to the cinema ecosystem.

Full post here.

So, when I saw that fellow FilmStacker Courtney Romano is organizing this movement to make 50 NonDē films in 2026, I knew had to jump on board!

I’ll write about the process here from time to time (maybe monthly updates if people are interested?) and organize the posts under the Grief Alchemy Project tag so you can follow along.

If there are any aspects in particular that people are curious about, let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to talk about them.

Here we go!

Until next time,

Tara