Can a daughter cross to the other side of her father’s story?
In Production • Creative Non Fiction • 30 minutes
At sixteen, Victoria is handed a cassette her father recorded decades earlier—his voice young, unafraid, narrating slides from a year in Sweden. The tape becomes a small door in memory—a loophole. Stepping through, she assembles a father from fragments: a Stockholm dorm hallway and doorknob he once touched; Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, which he dreamed of seeing; Paris, the trip he promised but never took with her. What surfaces is the quiet shattering beneath her childhood: a closeted gay father in small-town California, an HIV diagnosis, and a slow decline that ended in AIDS-related suicide four days before her eleventh birthday.
Moving between present-tense travel and intimate voiceover—on grief that evolves, danger mistaken for sophistication, and the bicycle lessons where a parent lets go—Victoria shifts from serving memory to letting memory serve her. The question is simple and enormous: can she release her father and claim her own life?
Director’s Note
I’m drawn to moments where the past, present, and imagined future touch—where a memory loophole appears. Victoria’s voice invites us into that threshold: not to re-stage the past, but to walk through it and emerge changed. After delivering See Memory to PBS, I wanted to bring that same rigor and tenderness here—crafting a film that honors one father’s complicated truth and a daughter’s radical empathy. —Viviane
Why this story, why now
Reframes the AIDS era through a daughter’s present-tense healing—history meeting now.
Explores survivor’s guilt → permission to live, a resonant mental-health arc.
Centers closeted life in small-town America and its long ripples.
Built for impact partnerships (HIV/LGBTQ+, grief orgs, campuses) with discussion-ready themes.
Outreach & Impact: Fathers & Family
What the film opens up
The role of fathers in our lives: how presence, absence, secrecy, and tenderness shape identity.
Complicated love: holding a parent’s flaws and gifts at the same time.
Letting go vs. holding on: the bicycle lesson as a metaphor for release and trust.
When a parent’s secret becomes a child’s story: closets, stigma, and intergenerational healing.
Grief that keeps evolving: not a finish line, but a relationship that changes as we do.
Who this program serves
Fatherhood initiatives, men’s circles, mentorship and coaching programs
LGBTQ+ family orgs, PFLAG chapters, Pride-month hosts
Colleges & high schools (family systems, memoir, gender studies, public health)
Hospitals, hospices, chaplaincy, social work and mental-health training
Community arts centers and libraries curating dialogues across generations
Programming anchors
Father’s Day (June), Pride Month (June), Mental Health Awareness Month (May), World AIDS Day (Dec 1), International Men’s Day (Nov 19)
Partners & Hosts: Invite a work-in-progress screening, classroom visit, or community conversation.
Educators: Request a discussion guide (draft) for memoir, grief studies, LGBTQ+ history, or public health.
Supporters: Underwrite finishing funds, impact screenings, or accessibility (captions, ASL).
Contact: onartprojects@gmail.com
At-a-Glance
Title: The Memory Loophole
Length: ~30 minutes (short feature)
Format: Documentary / Creative nonfiction
Language: English
Accessibility (planned): Open/closed captions; audio description
Status: In production; seeking finishing funds, impact partners, and WIP screenings