BY Robert Martinez
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 6/20/26 – Hrag Yedalian’s hour-long documentary Beyond the Ashes is an earnest attempt to explain the impact of the Eaton Canyon Fire of January 7, 2025 on the Black community of Altadena. It is one of the more important documentary films included in this year’s Dances with Films Film Festival, June 18-28, at the TLC Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. Divided into 12 chapters, the film features about 20 major African-American community members of Altadena who either lost their homes to the fire or were directly impacted by it in loss of business, family and friends.
The film incorporates some history of Altadena as a black community related to its generational attachment to black-owned homes in this unincorporated part of Los Angeles County just north of affluent Pasadena. This film does not focus on blame, although it does note that 9,400 homes and structures were destroyed by this wind-driven fire that was caused by a downed utility power line in Eaton Canyon and 47 lives were lost. Five public schools were lost and numerous churches.
Hrag Yedalian is a Los Angeles-based political consultant and filmmaker whose work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and San Francisco Chronicle. Hrag ventured into the world of documentary filmmaking by accident while a student at UC Berkeley. As a history major, he was interested in learning more about people who inspired social and political change and discovered that film can be used as a tool to share such stories. His first documentary, The People’s Advocate: The Life & Times of Charles R. Garry, was called “an illuminating portrait” by The Hollywood Reporter and won the 2007 Bay Area Video Coalition Mediamaker Award. Yedalian is an Armenian-American and willing to tackle hard hitting political issues – like a behind the scenes look at System of a Down’s music video Protect the Land. He worked with producer Brandon D. Lamar and Project Passion to make this film which points out the resilience of the African-American community of Altadena despite their tragic losses.
The importance of Black churches in the African-American community in Altadena and Pasadena is known but needs to be better understood. Appropriately the film opens in its first chapter “A Sacred Place” with Pastor Thomas BeReal, who lost his church Abounding Grace Ministries to the fire.
We are introduced to some of the major voices in the film, including Rand Vance, members of the famous Robinson family, artist Kendurah Davis, Patrice Marshall McKenzie, business owner Emek A Chuk Wurah, Derek Steele, Chris Holden (mayor of Pasadena), Jasmin Shupper of the non-profit Greenline Housing Project, and Brandon D. Lamar who is President of the Pasadena chapter of the NAACP as well as the producer of the film.
As Chris Holden, Mayor of Pasadena, explains about the Eaton Canyon fire of January 7, 2025, “It was a catastrophic fire in the middle of a catastrophic wind event, I don’t think Hollywood could have written anything quite like that.” The fire became in Eaton Canyon on this high hills above East Pasadena. Ordinarily fired burn up towards the mountains above the area, but the 100-mile-hour winds drove the fire swiftly west across Altadena both east and west of Lake Avenue.
We see footage from TV crews and local residents of the fire hopping across whole city blocks at a moment’s notice due to the “devil winds.” We see photos of Altadena and Pasadena before and after the fire. What is salient is that before the fire, 80% of Altadena had Black-owned homes which they had occupied for several generations and that they lost of their homes mean everything.
We see the resilience of the community very soon after the fire was contained and the destruction first assessed. Community members (black, brown, and white) provided food, water and clothing to those in need who lost everything. Leading the effort was Brandon D. Lamar, of the Pasadena NAACP and Derek Steele of the Social Justice Learning Institute who explains: “It shows what we can do with a tragedy but also what we can do together without a tragedy.” He acknowledges that not everyone is willing to rebuild, as “Disasters don’t discriminate. It’s the recovery process that does.”
There is where later in the film, we learn about the recovery effort and the determination of many Black families in Altadena to rebuild their homes. One bigger concern is the opportunistic developers who like to buy up land and build larger apartment buildings to make an easy profit. One of those key people is to push back against this tendency is Jasmin Shupper with the non-profit Greenline Housing Project which is buying up properties of those who cannot chose not to stay and need to sell their ruined property. Greenline has begun buying up those properties and selling them to Black or Brown families in order to keep Altadena racially diverse, as it has always been.
In Altadena, so many of its African-American residents go back generations and they know each other quite well. One of those important families is the Robinsons – the offspring of world-famous athlete Jackie Robinson and his less-well-known brother Mack Robinson, a runner who came in second in the 200-meter in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Jesse Owens took the gold medal.
Although Pasadena’s public school system included Altadena, segregation did impact African-Americans in Altadena as well. Red-lining was designed by relators in the 1960s to limit African-Americans from buying a home east of Lake Avenue, concentrating Black homeowners west of Lake Avenue. Hence to this day, Black and Latino-owned homes are congregated in the northwest part of Pasadena and up into Altadena.
I live in Western Pasadena, a few blocks from Altadena and I witnessed the fire myself. I recall the evacuation process including the massive transport of the elderly from the rest homes in that part of Pasadena with hundreds of ambulances lined up to transport them to the unused older wing of Huntington Memorial Hospital. The fire came 3 blocks from my home and I was a fortunate survivor. There was nowhere for many fire survivors to go as all the motels and hostels in the area were quickly filled up to capacity. People were sleeping on the floor at the Pasadena Auditorium and various churches that opened their auditoriums to fire victims.
The National Guard was called in to cordon off Altadena as fire fighters continued to put out smoldering flames in burnt out residences and prevent looting. There was much concern about the toxicity of the burnt structures. Many residents were unsure if they had completely lost their homes and were unable to find out for more than a week. “Beyond the Ashes” does not dwell on all these immediate aspects of the fire but moves on to focus on the resilience of the Black community of Altadena and the articulate voices of leadership in that community.
I have known Chris Holden, mayor of Pasadena, for some time. His understanding of history and community is impressive. He recalls in the film that at age 5, he was at Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena when Martin Luther King, Jr. preached there with a message of hope against the times and against the head winds that hold back societal change. As voices in the film reiterate, many African-American families are determined to stay in Altadena and rebuild despite the obstacles.
Altadena has long been a diverse community and wants to remain that way. The mantra “Altadena is not for sale” resonates strongly. This film Beyond the Ashes asks its viewers to continue to care and be helpful through the outreach programs set up like Passion Project and Greenline Housing non-profit. I see residents in the area at the local coffee shops as they tell me their plans to rebuild and I am impressed with their drive and resilience despite the fact that some are already elderly. They are determined to keep Altadena as a beacon of hope for the future generations like it has been for them.
To see Beyond the Ashes at the Dances With Films Film Festival of truly independent films, go to: https://danceswithfilms.com. It can also be downloaded for viewing.
