'A House Made of Splinters' Review: Sundance Doc on Ukrainian Children

Table Of Content

• Ray Chan, Art Director and Production Designer for Marvel Films, Dies at 56
• The Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles Architecture
• Storyline
• What are those ugly diamonds bolted onto the side of old buildings?
• Los Angeles Architecture
• The 30 most beautiful buildings in Los Angeles
• A guide to Los Angeles architecture
• Latest blog posts

Typical detailing includes simple Greek or Roman-style columns or pediments and square chimney stacks. Due to their steeply raked roofs, the front elevation of these homes conceals the sides of the building. American Colonial homes are usually rectangular in shape, but homeowners often add extensions to the side or rear elevations. One home style that’s flourished on the architectural evolutionary tree is the Craftsman bungalow, as identifiably Southern California as the Hollywood sign.

Ray Chan, Art Director and Production Designer for Marvel Films, Dies at 56

They often lash out at each other, or the adults, especially the boys—one cuts his arm and uses a marker to deface the facility. And Wilmont opens the door to how much situations like this trickle down across generations. "She copies what she saw in her childhood," says a social worker who speaks of seeing mothers who were children at Lysychansk now dropping off their offspring.

The Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles Architecture

Her deadline is approaching, after which she may be sent to an orphanage, unless her estranged grandmother agrees to be her guardian — not a given in such fraught times. For the younger, cherub-faced Sasha, blood relatives are not an option, though when a lonely single woman expresses an interest in fostering her, the film is warmed by the promise of mutual healing. The Lysychansk Center for The Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children is designed to be temporary. Children can only stay there for nine months before they have to either find guardianship or be sent off to orphanages.

Storyline

Thanks to a small team of social workers — it’s truly hard to tell if there are two or three or more — the center isn’t a depressing place, though its Eastern European-standard external architecture might lead you to expect that. The kids celebrate holidays and even get the occasional visitor in a unicorn or Elsa costume. Last month, one of the most surprising Oscar nominees was "A House Made of Splinters," a film that edged out some strong contenders in the Best Documentary category and is getting a VOD and limited theatrical release today. Filmed at an orphanage in Eastern Ukraine before the war began there in February of last year, it's hard to push away thoughts of how much this part of the world has been decimated over the last 12 months. Wilmont’s filmmaking approach is deeply influenced by cinema verité and draws inspiration from luminaries such as the Maysles Brothers and Frederick Wiseman. He skillfully wields the camera as an instrument to establish genuine connections and foster trust with his protagonists.

What are those ugly diamonds bolted onto the side of old buildings?

Named after the coastal Massachusetts region, where this architecture is ubiquitous, it is actually based on a British Georgian style from the 18th century. Transposed to the American colonies, the style has been simplified and rendered practical for local materials and climates. The suburbanization of Los Angeles characterizes the postwar period's prosperity (from 1945 to the recession of 1973). These styles were relatively inexpensive to construct, and their simplicity and utility met the needs of the burgeoning middle class. The styles of homes in Los Angeles are closely tied to the city's history and evolution. At the time of its founding in 1850, Los Angeles was scarcely more than a semi-lawless pioneer outpost with encampments near the Los Angeles River.

The Traditional style is typified by simple, unadorned facades and low or intermediate pitched roofs, usually with at least one front-facing gable or hip and a large chimney. Normandy's provincial homes featured narrow-eave, steep-hipped roofs, with side-facing gables and sometimes an L-shaped plan placing the front door at the junction of the two wings. Dormer windows often project through the eaves, and these rustic-styled homes are finished in stucco, stone, or brick. Stonework window surrounds, louvered shutters, and delicate wrought iron touches are other signatures of this style.

The 30 most beautiful buildings in Los Angeles

It’s sturdy enough to have withstood both a blackmailer’s dynamite attack and the depredations of frat boys, who were given the boot and eventually replaced by an order of Catholic nuns. If you can afford it (and many can’t, a topic not being dealt with here), the impulse that brought millions to live in Southern California also bequeathed us a landscape ornamented with marvelous houses. Houses as delightfully kooky as a neighborhood designed by Tim Burton by way of Gaudí.

‘A House Made Of Splinters’ Beats Odds To Make Oscar Shortlist - Deadline

‘A House Made Of Splinters’ Beats Odds To Make Oscar Shortlist.

Posted: Wed, 11 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

These homes can be quite tall with steeply sloped roofs and multiple floors. They are often half-timbered, with wood paneling on the upper levels and stone or brickwork below. Hybrid cottage styles might include small porches and gabled dormers in attic stories. Balconies and bay windows are other possible modifications features in more extensive examples of this style. A standard detail is the decorative knee braces holding the extended eaves, from which hanging flower baskets are often hung. Windows on bungalows tend to be double-hung with single panes and simple wooden casements.

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Peaking in the 1920s and 1930s but still popular today, Mediterranean Revival style draws from an eclectic blend of Spanish Renaissance and Spanish Colonial, Italian Renaissance, Andalusian and Beaux-Arts influences. Commonly found in Florida and Southern California, these homes offer comfort and often integrate interior courtyards and landscaped gardens. Popular in America between 1915 and 1945, French-inspired styles were popularized by soldiers returning home from the World Wars.

The kids who leave with a relative or a foster parent or even an actual parent promising newfound sobriety often return months later. In some cases, they return years later to visit their own children, confiscated by the State. It’s the last time that “the frontline,” which has Ukraine back in headlines again this week, is mentioned in the documentary, premiering in competition at Sundance. A House Made of Splinters assumes that you have some awareness of the years of unrest in Ukraine — some sense of the source of the movie’s bleakness. Simon Lereng Wilmont's documentary focuses on a shelter for children impacted by unrest in Ukraine, specifically the experiences of a trio of sad-eyed subjects.

Look below the glassy skyscrapers and you'll find Art Deco high-rises in Downtown Los Angeles, craftsman bungalows in Pasadena and envious estates along the hills and beaches. We think Los Angeles architecture is worth celebrating, so we've put together this guide to some of the city's most remarkable buildings and styles. French eclectic might blend aspects of Craftsman, Cottage, or other styles to create a hybrid form while still retaining some of the rustic elements of French provincial homes, such as steeply raked grey-tiled roofs and brick chimneys. Chateauesque, as its name suggests, is a grander and more formal look, borrowing from French medieval castle design. Large homes in this style often have round towers or square turrets surmounted with conical or pyramidal roofs.

These homes' interiors are often open-plan with built-in cabinetry incorporated into large fireplaces, such as benches on either side. This was also the era of planned subdivisions like Hollywoodland (in upper Beachwood Canyon), Whitley Heights, and Outpost Estates. The construction boom ran out of steam when the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929. In variants from tiny two-bedrooms to airy mansions, the style lives on in pre-war homes that adorn hillsides from Silver Lake to the sea, like the late actress Dolores del Rio’s 1926 Hollywood home of tile and wrought iron and chalk-white stucco.

Comfortable open-plan interiors were softened with designer furnishings, and these homes were often intended to be admired as works of art and showcases for design collections. Decorative arches and shady terraces are common features, as are projecting porches over heavy wooden front doors. Windows often are tall with shutters on either side, and where roofs are sloped, the angle tends to be shallow. Overlapping terracotta pantiles co-ordinate with pale yellow or ochre exteriors. Modern versions of this style usually keep the low-angled, projecting eaves and large porches, whilst substituting more modern materials, exteriors with light colors, and additional upper floor space. Natural materials such as stone and wood are preferred, with a focus on a high degree of craftsmanship and easy integration into natural surroundings.

Cottage homes in a traditional English style are highly sought-after. Cottage styles often incorporate idiosyncratic layouts, cozier rooms, and curving roof eaves sometimes finished with brickwork or mock-thatch. That’s not to say that “A House Made of Splinters” — the title seemingly alluding to the broken-off lives contained within — is entirely a downbeat exercise. Rather, it’s an affecting diary of life continuing in the worst of circumstances, disrupted equally by sorrow and fleeting joy. Take the opening sequence, following a social worker as she perkily breezes through the dorms with a morning wake-up call, jostling bleary-eyed kids into a vigorous musical aerobics routine. “Every tenth door here hides a broken family,” the voiceover continues, describing the shattered region that the shelter serves; here, staff forge a sense of family from the fragments.

A surprise Academy Award® nominee for Best Documentary Feature this year, A House Made of Splinters is the latest work from internationally lauded director and cinematographer, Simon Lereng Wilmont. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Wilmont graduated as a Documentary Film Director from The National Film School of Denmark in 2009. His first feature documentary, The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017), premiered at IDFA and received critical acclaim, winning the Best First Appearance award and a Peabody Award in 2020.

What's more, the creation of the VA Loan program lowered the barriers to entry for home ownership. Minimal Traditional homes were perfect for fulfilling the demand for scalable, affordable homes. In fact, it was the predominant residential architectural style in America until it was superseded by Ranch-style homes in the 1950s.