Empress Hotel

About the Project

Empress Hotel is a feature-length documentary film about formerly homeless people in San Francisco. The film contrasts the order of the hotel as a community to the solitary lives of the individuals who live there. The film explores perspective and truth about what it is to be homeless and whether mental illness is an indiscriminate label applied more readily to those already demoralized by circumstance. Some subjects’ pasts are reenacted and inner fantasies and metaphorical descriptions are visualized.

The film's authenticity rests in the voices of the residents and what they will reveal and share with the audience. The film will glean moments from their lives which will mirror the very challenges with which everyone grapples. The viewer will experience stories of survival, courage, loss, endurance, confusion, pain, humanity and fellowship. The work will have the viewer looking at fellow human beings with all their frailties and resilience with more compassion, empathy and a kinship.

Empress Hotel is about what it means to be human under duress and will expose the complex slide into homelessness that is often not the fault of an individual. The film will also reveal the human face of citizens transitioning from homelessness to permanent affordable housing, an important intervention called supportive housing, which offers a humane approach to a complicated societal problem.