As a documentary filmmaker, he’s picked up his camera to process the loss and try to save the memories and stories of his neighbors who came to Altadena long before him, and made it into such a special place.

His documentary project is aiming to preserve the history of Altadena and the families who lived there for generations, making it a singular, culturally important home to so many. He and his team are filming with residents to track how the community came to be: from the indigenous Tongva inhabitants, to an Anglo-American destination, to a thriving African-American community, and how this history will inform future rebuilding and restoration.

While looking to the past, the project will also document the fire event and follow the process of rebuilding, asking the questions: can an incorporated territory, organically shaped into a community that welcomed folks from all walks of life, maintain it’s character through planning and governance? Will Altadena maintain it’s historical community and what players and what new communities may form to shape it’s renewal?

While Ian is a documentary filmmaker by trade, he’s also a community organizer and mutual aid activist, living in LA County for the past 20 years. He has focused much of his filmmaking around education, homelessness, and social activism. His first feature documentary, Reversing the Mississippi (broadcast on PBS), illustrated the work of an urban farming school in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and he has since explored issues around the evolution of public spaces and progression of communities. He aims for this new project to serve as a historical record while also sharing the personal stories of folks who make Altadena irreplaceable today, and tomorrow.