{"id":394455,"date":"2026-01-08T04:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T04:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/394455\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T04:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T04:25:10","slug":"altadena-wildfire-documented-in-shortlisted-all-the-walls-came-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/394455\/","title":{"rendered":"Altadena Wildfire Documented In Shortlisted ‘All The Walls Came Down’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne year ago today, filmmaker Ondi Timoner<\/a> was traveling in Europe at work on a new project when her phone pinged with an alarming bulletin: wildfire was tearing through Timoner\u2019s Altadena neighborhood in Los Angeles. She would learn the walls had come down at the home she shared with her wife, musician and composer Morgan Doctor<\/a> \u2014 fire consuming virtually all their possessions along with Ondi\u2019s film archive.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce Timoner got back to LA she immediately began documenting the devastation around her \u2013 the loss of her home and thousands of other dwellings in Altadena, a remarkable neighborhood known for its historically high percentage of home ownership by people of color. Today, on the one-year anniversary of the wildfires, the LA Times released<\/a> Timoner\u2019s Oscar shortlisted short documentary All the Walls Came Down<\/a>, a personal and poignant account of what she, her wife and neighbors have faced as they coped with enormous loss and enormous obstacles to rebuilding their lives.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll the Walls Came Down was born not from a desire to tell my own story, but from an overwhelming need to make sense of this historic disaster and to tell my community\u2019s story,\u201d Timoner writes in an essay for the LA Times. \u201cI knew from documenting my father Eli\u2019s last days as a way to survive his passing, which resulted in my film Last Flight Home that despite feeling intense pain and grief, if I didn\u2019t muster the strength to document, I wouldn\u2019t have the material to transform the experience down the road into something meaningful for others \u2014 if in fact there was something meaningful to share. So I teamed up with my nephew, Eli Timoner, whose parents also lost their Altadena home about a mile south of mine, and a number of local camera people, to capture the chaos that unfolded over the six months following the fire which destroyed more than 9,400 structures, over 6,000 homes, over 60% of the town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTimoner continues, \u201cThe film began as a meditation on impermanence and the fragility of everything we assume to be stable. But then, amid the devastation, I found something remarkable: We became more aware and caring of each other as neighbors than we ever were when we lived next door to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ondi<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tOndi Timoner in hazmat suit and a peacock in the burned neighborhood of Altadena.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Eli Timoner<\/p>\n

\n\tEarly in All the Walls Come Down, Timoner and Doctor arrive at the charred remains of their home to find a sign posted by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works emblazoned with the words \u201cUnsafe. Do not enter or occupy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m horrified,\u201d Timoner says through tears as she and Doctor suit up in hazmat protective gear. \u201cIt was like my whole life. I loved it there. I\u2019m still alive but look at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA peacock \u2013 a frequent sight in the neighborhood \u2013 caws as in the background as the couple inspects the ruins, finding a burned canister containing a print of one of Ondi\u2019s films. Doctor unearths the singed remains of a Hang, a metal percussion instrument she had played on all her recordings. Though ashen, the convex steel form still resonates to the rhythmic thump of her hands.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\u2018All<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018All The Walls Came Down\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tInterloper Films\/LA Times<\/p>\n

\n\tSoon, Timoner and Doctor will meet up with others who lived nearby, like Rand Vance Jr. and his family, reckoning with the loss of a home that had been in their family for generations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis was our family legacy,\u201d he tells Timoner. \u201cThe insurance [company] let us know we\u2019re underinsured. They said we\u2019re about 170 grand short.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYoung Kael Hart and his family are forced to take up residence at a Travelodge motel after their home is destroyed. \u201cI lost my house. I lost it, I lost everything that I have,\u201d Kael says. \u201cMy mom didn\u2019t even get the [box] of toys that I asked her to get! I\u2019m very mad because I have some true memories about those toys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'All<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tInterloper Films\/LA Times<\/p>\n

\n\tMy colleague Damon Wise reviewed the documentary<\/a> today, noting \u201cthis isn\u2019t an angry film, more a celebration of the way in which so many different people, from so many different backgrounds, pooled what little they had to come back better and stronger rather than bend to defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her essay accompanying the film on the LA Times website, Timoner concludes, \u201cWe titled [the film] All the Walls Came Down because when our once-siloed lives were forever changed overnight, and none of us could go home again, [t]he walls of race, class and culture also came down, and my neighbors and I found strength and healing in standing together as a community and helping each other.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe might be the first climate refugees, but we won\u2019t be the last. We live in a time of accelerating disaster, where fire, flood, and loss are becoming commonplace. But if walls can fall in an instant, perhaps the walls that divide us \u2014 between filmmaker and subject, between housed and unhoused, between past and future \u2014 can also come down.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can watch the full documentary (for free) by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year ago today, filmmaker Ondi Timoner was traveling in Europe at work on a new project when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[79318,88,190952,190953,206,79319],"class_list":{"0":"post-394455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-all-the-walls-came-down","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-la-wildfires","11":"tag-morgan-doctor","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-ondi-timoner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}