Guilty Films’ documentary ‘Gatwick – The Last Chance Hotel’ to debut on ABC TV, Tues, Nov 27

Positive Ape Films’ documentary Gatwick – The Last Chance Hotel premieres on ABC TV on Tuesday, November 27 at 9:30pm and chronicles the final years of the Gatwick Private Hotel, a boarding house that over the years became a local and then national icon.

Shot over four years prior to the sale of the Gatwick in 2017 and its makeover on popular renovation series, The Block, this intimate documentary reveals the day to day lives of proprietors Rose Banks and Yvette ‘Etty’ Kelly, twin sisters who worked at the hotel from the age of 14.

Before a forced closure and sale in 2017 the building was halfway home to a few, home to many. Gatwick Private Hotel housed a rag tag menagerie of characters who either lived in, frequented or volunteered their time, all under the caring eyes of Rose and Etty, known locally as ‘The Saints of St Kilda’.

The feature documentary Gatwick – The Last Chance Hotel opens the doors to this historical building, allowing the viewer a unique look into the lives and love that made this institution what it was. We are given unrestricted access to the sisters who became mothers to hundreds, selflessly opening their hearts and home to the disadvantaged for over 40 years.

Gatwick – The Last Chance Hotel is an intimate, powerful and moving documentary that reveals the complex, surprising and fascinating characters behind the walls of what from the outside looks like a beaten-down building that is well past it’s golden years.

If you ask a Melburnian about the Gatwick Private Hotel, you will most likely get a variation on the same reaction: it’s a bad place that brings trouble, it’s haunted, sinister, filthy, replete with murder and crime. The boarding house has picked up a barrage of negative publicity over the years and has even been referred to as ‘The Hotel of Horrors’. A number of people wanted it shut down.

But look deeper, ask around locally in St. Kilda and you come across a lot of people with a different story. Those with fond memories of the building, of the friends and family they made there, or most likely of all, someone with heartfelt praise and adoration for Queen Vicky and Aunties Rose and Etty. These strong women leave behind a legacy of compassion that is so sorely missed in Australian society that it is hard to believe until you have spent 4 years inside these walls as we had the privilege of doing.

In the beginning producer/creator Jason Byrne stumbled across the story of the two identical twin sisters who owned and managed the infamous Gatwick hotel in St Kilda Melbourne.

Says Byrne: “I introduced myself and witnessed in the space of hour more selfless acts of kindness than some people would enact in a life time. I had to tell this story. So the journey began, documenting the cavalcade of characters and the eco system of the The Gatwick Hotel in St Kilda, with the collaboration with a number of brilliant creative talents including Sara Edwards, Luci Schroder, Jaque Fisher and others.”

For more info and to watch the trailer go to: http://www.lastchancehotel.com.au/.

Developed and Produced by Positive Ape with The Difference Engine.

Produced by Jason Byrne

Co-Producer – Julian Vincent Costanzo