Hotel Documentaries

[Charise Zelnick]

Basicallya team of hot, young mixologists, event planners, and servers have been transplanted from the States to run Chateau Rosabelle, a property that basically screams LVP at every turn with pink everything, excessive floral displays, fine dining, and a side of crazy behaviour.

This British period drama from ITV takes us back to 1940. Set inside The Halcyon Hotel, the height of class and 5-star hedonism, the eight-part programme shows how London was affected throughout the war, with storylines around both the elite guests and working-class staff.

From the role of the concierge (and just how far they go for their guests), to over-the-top events and the changing market of the hotel industry, this is another great hotel TV show with which to while away some hours.

It's a true crime documentarian's dream. Grainy security footage shows Lam, spooked and strange, in an elevator communicating hysterically ... to another person? A demented spirit haunting the Cecil? Who can tell? Later, mimicking the actual plot of Japanese horror classic Dark Water, Lam's decomposing body is found face up in the hotel's water tank. Residents had been drinking, washing and brushing their teeth in murky water from that very tank for days before she was discovered.

With a mystery like that, and a legendary director in Joe Berlinger (previously responsible for classics like Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost) you'd expect Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel to be must-see TV. But it's not.

It's bad. And not just bad. Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is bloated, dull and confusing. It's irresponsible and dishonest, indulging conspiracy theories that put already vulnerable victims at further risk.

In what has quickly become a Netflix documentary trend, Cecil Hotel is in painful need of an edit -- repeating details endlessly, playing for time with meaningless segues and pointless interviews. Is it a metrics issue? Does Netflix demand documentarians stretch their projects endlessly?

Watching any serialized documentary series demands a tolerance for deliberately placed red herrings that are quickly resolved in the following episode, but Cecil Hotel does some fairly unforgivable stuff.

One particular piece of information, deliberately withheld near the beginning, is used to create mystery and debate around the nature of Lam's death for the entirety of the show, only to be resolved almost casually near the end of the final episode. Hours of needless speculation and -- at times -- baseless accusations toward police and hotel staff all rendered completely and utterly pointless. There's a limit here and Cecil Hotel breezes past it.

In an attempt to stretch the show's runtime, Cecil Hotel fills out minutes of screen time with a rotating cast of "internet sleuths" -- YouTubers essentially -- who range from mildly strange to downright creepy. These sleuths spend hours dissecting footage, digging through Elisa Lam's social media accounts, making outrageous claims on YouTube channels.

Via these sleuths, Cecil Hotel indulges all types of conspiracy theories, lending them credence and respect throughout. Only to reveal -- in the final 10 minutes -- that almost everything they said was complete horseshit.

Cecil Hotel's endless trawling through Elisa Lam's Tumblr blog feels uncomfortable, like reading someone's teenage diary -- but given Lam's mental health struggles being paramount to the case it's arguably understandable. However, having these strange sleuths (one asked a friend to record himself touching Lam's gravestone) dissecting them uncritically on camera is a step too far.

But it's nothing compared to the treatment of Pablo "Morbid" Vergara, a death metal singer bizarrely caught in a vortex of baseless speculation. After stumbling across a YouTube video of him documenting a stay at the hotel, internet sleuths took it upon themselves to accuse Morbid of murdering Lam and dumping her body in the water tank.

Not only does the Cecil Hotel documentary obscure the fact that Morbid stayed at the hotel 12 months before Lam's disappearance for almost its entire runtime, it indulges wild conspiracy theories that he was involved with her death. Using footage of his death metal videos, alongside death metal lyrics, it deliberately creates a narrative that his involvement in Lam's death is a viable possibility.

Only later do we find out that not only was Morbid not in the United States at the time of Lam's disappearance, he'd been endlessly harassed and threatened to the point where he attempted to take his own life and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Egged on by the same type of internet sleuths who are given a huge, uncritical platform in this documentary.

But it's par for the course with Cecil Hotel, a documentary that takes an insane, slam dunk story and somehow makes it not just boring, but borderline offensive by providing a platform to a group of people who actively derailed the case and hurt people.

Cecil Hotel could have been a tight, concise mystery. It could have been a warning about online communities and the collateral damage they cause when they assume expertise. But it's none of these things. It's an overly long mess of a documentary that disrespects its audience and the story it's trying to tell but, worst of all, disrespects the victims.

The Sunshine Hotel was a flophouse (single room occupancy hotel) at 245 Bowery in Manhattan, New York City. It received media attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a result of numerous radio and film documentaries about the hotel. In recent decades, the Sunshine Hotel has been reduced in size with parts being converted into restaurant and office space.

Originally, the Sunshine Hotel occupied the internally connected upper floors of 241, 243 and 245 Bowery, labeled Sunshine, Lakewood and Annex respectively. The lobby was located on the second floor of 241 Bowery. The Lakewood had 45 cubicles, the Sunshine 100, and the Annex 36[1] with three barracks-like dormitories. The walkup is now at 245 Bowery.

241 Bowery was originally an office for the New York and Harlem Rail Company in the 1830s. In the late 1870s it was the location of the saloon and brothel Sultan Divin, and in 1910 the Fleabag saloon took over.[7] By the early 1920s, the address was a pickle factory.

In 1922 Frank Mazzara, a broom-maker, followed his brother-in-law Mike Gatto of the Andrews Hotel, into the lodging business by purchasing the location and opening the Sunshine Hotel.[8][7][9] Mazzara reworked the faade in the styles of Art Deco and Commercial. This faade had pale yellow bricks, limestone pediments and panels, and plaques with wreath and torch emblems.

Mazarra's son Carl took over the Sunshine Hotel in 1946.[8] In 1949, the New York branch of the NAACP investigated Bowery hotels and found that the Sunshine Hotel was discriminating against black people by refusing them service.[10] In 1970 James Adair, the hotel manager at the time, refused to sell cigarettes to a man and was then shot to death on the hotel's second floor.[11] Carl retired in 1984 and sold the hotel to the Bari family, who were in the restaurant supply business, who used part of the hotel to store their business's pizza ovens.[4][8]

By 1998, the Sunshine Hotel accommodated about 125 residents.[5] The flophouse received attention after being featured in an NPR segment created by David Isay. In 2001 Michael Dominic released an award-winning documentary Sunshine Hotel. Both Isay's and Dominic's documentaries were narrated by the 16-year manager of the Sunshine Hotel, Nathan Smith, who died of cancer in 2002.[3]

In August 2004 Anton Bari, the owner of the Sunshine Hotel, started buying out residents and refusing new guests. At this time, the flophouse had about 44 guests.[1] By 2008, the Sunshine Hotel had fewer than 30 residents.

On June 30, 2008, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development ruled that the hotel was harassing tenants to force them out. The city government gave the hotel three more years before developers could use the location.[12]

The Sunshine Hotel lost its plywood signage in 2011 as workers converted the first floor of one of the hotel's three buildings into the Bowery Diner.[13] In August 2014, Roseann Carone of Harlen Sales started converting the building's two upper floors into offices. Meanwhile, the 30 to 40 Sunshine Hotel residents stayed in neighboring 239 Bowery.[14] In June 2017, Carone reapplied for a "Certificate of No Harassment" to protect the hotel's lawful residents from harassment.[15]

Filmmaker Michael Dominic made the multi-award winning[17] and critically acclaimed feature documentary, Sunshine Hotel. Dominic worked on the Bowery and knew several residents of the flophouses. He became interested in making a documentary about the Sunshine and its residents. He began filming in 1999 and the completed film was released in 2001. Sunshine Hotel was his first documentary.[18] It was released on Amazon Prime Video in 2012.[19]

Andrea Chase praised the film's cinematography and structure, writing that the film "offers a unsparing look at what it means to hit bottom and stay there."[22] Josh Ralke also gave the film a positive review, praising how it captures the lives of the hotel's residents.[23]

Phil Bertelsen created a 30-minute documentary student film titled The Sunshine in 2000 which follows some residents and workers for the Sunshine Hotel.[24] It won awards for best short documentary at the 2000 Woodstock Film Festival[25] and at the 2000 Shorts International Film Festival.[26] Bertelsen was given the prize for "Best Black Student Filmmaker" at the 2002 DGA East Coast Student Film Awards for his work on this film.[27]

The program won a Prix Italia award in 1999 under the factual documentary category.[30] The documentary was included in an episode of the radio show 99% Invisible which aired on August 4, 2015.[5]

3a8082e126