When Emmy-winning filmmaker Kate Schermerhorn started creating her latest documentary about consumerism and excess, she started looking for the perfect subject to weave in throughout: a person who either had lost a parent and was tasked with going through their stuff or someone whose parents were downsizing.

In the 10 years it took to make her newest film, the Novato resident would end up turning the camera on herself. In “Do I Need This?” she filmed her family as her parents downsized from their home in the Pacific Northwest to an assisted living facility in San Francisco to a house in San Rafael. She then documented her process of navigating grief and reflecting on the “stuff from which happiness is made” when her mom died, followed by her dad eight months later.

“I started interviewing people about the way their stuff impacted their lives. One of my first interviews was with Fairfax’s Rudy Contratti, who’s a collector, and then I interviewed a woman who doesn’t call herself a hoarder. She says she has a ‘clutter disorder,’ but some people might think differently. As I was doing this, my parents announced that they were going to be downsizing. It just seemed impossible to make the film without including myself,” said Schermerhorn, who also narrates parts of the film, sharing some of her inner thoughts throughout the process.

Among the subjects are Marin couple Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who create art out of the plastic and other trash they find along local beaches. Others are Contratti, whose Fairfax home is filled to the brim with collectibles, and his antithesis, Mill Valley’s Bea Johnson, a huge longtime player in the zero-waste lifestyle movement, who shows Schermerhorn the tiny jars of trash that she’s accumulated — like a sticker on an apple from the grocery store when she couldn’t make it to the farmers market and a cheese wrapper.

The film, which was shown to a sold-out crowd at the Smith Rafael Film Center last weekend, has also been presented at the Fairfax Women’s Club, Genentech, Apple, AARP and others. She’s open to other organizations screening the film. It will air on PBS later this year.

Emotions run high

One of the only parts of Schermerhorn’s life she planned to show was her garage at her then-home in San Anselmo. While working with an organizer and going through the piles of stuff, she got emotional and cried as she touched a box of binders filled with work she created with her ex-husband.

“My garage, I called it the purgatory, in between the stage of my house and the landfill or some other life,” she said. “I was overwhelmed with this emotion of getting rid of this, I guess, dream of a marriage. It was very surprising to feel so attached to something that was so trivial. But it turned out to be something that people really can relate to.”

“I knew that people have a physical attachment to stuff. I also knew that I personally have always been attached to stuff. I’ve been the laughing stock of my family since childhood about how I can’t get rid of anything. But what did strike me in that moment was that I couldn’t keep it together when I was just trying to have a simple demonstration for the camera. I wasn’t prepared for having that happen.”

The film began with an idea: What do we actually need? She had visions of a world where piles of garbage sat intact after the planet has been destroyed, making it inhabitable for humans.

“I was thinking about the way that we Americans consume and how there’s so much stuff on the planet,” she said. “I started thinking about making a film that would help people slow down their consumption habits and become more conscious consumers, but I didn’t want to make a film that was preaching to the converted. Maybe these people don’t care about how it impacts the planet, but maybe they do if it impacts their life on a personal level. I tried to make it relatable and without guilt or shame about the way we consume, just slow down how you consume, that’s the first step.”

She didn’t imagine though the other layers that would wrap around the film.

“I feel like the film started as a film about stuff, but ultimately, as someone said, ‘It’s a love letter to your parents.’ I think it does feel like that, but the thing that it comes back to is ultimately what makes for a fulfilling and meaningful life?” said Schermerhorn, who learned to “curate” the sentimental items from her parents.

“Anything with my mom’s handwriting, like the little sticky notes that she would put on articles and send to me, those kind of things have the most sentimental value to me now.”

When she attends screenings these days, someone always asks what her garage looks like now. It’s “nothing like it was before.”

“Before I moved, I did purge, but I also have a bigger house now. It felt like, whatever fits in this house in a reasonable way, you can keep it. Otherwise, that’s it. While we were editing the film, there was this realization when I started thinking, ‘why am I keeping this?’”

In the film, expert Randy Frost talks about a woman who has a collection of hundreds of cookbooks but doesn’t cook.

“She’s living on a dream of something that’s not a reality,” she said. “You can’t live on a dream of what could happen. You have to live in your reality. You can let go. It’s OK.”

When she looks at her life now, she doesn’t “need” much: just adventure, community, creativity, her children and her dogs. And she’s happy with that.