Guest House Helios
Ryan Jeffery Video 58 minutes 2012
One sheet
Synopsis
Guest House Helios is a Croatian seaside hotel resort built in 1963 during the
Yugoslavian era. The film follows the day-to-day operations of the hotel, documenting both the guests and the employees of the hotel. This encompasses everything from the cleaning of the rooms, the kitchen staff, the book keeping and administrative staff, and the provided activities and entertainment. Many of these guests have frequented the hotel repeatedly for years, some even since the hotel’s construction. Located on the island of Lošinj, the island’s relationship to leisure dates back as early as the Roman Empire through the Austro-Hungarian when the island was discovered to be the ideal climate for those suffering from respiratory ailments. Over the past century Lošinj has remained a destination for health and leisure through a complicated political history of The Austrian Monarchy, the fascism of Italian and German influence, Yugoslavian communism, and now neoliberal capitalism. This portrait of this one particular hotel serves as a catalog of the gestures of both work and leisure that make up the identities of people throughout changing technologies, economic systems and ruling political structures.
Bio
Ryan Jeffery is a recent graduate of the Film and Video MFA program at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia California. His films and installations have shown at the Sonar Festival, The International Short Film Festival in Leuven, Belgium, the Festival Nouveau Cinema and The European Media Arts Festival in Osnäbruck. His latest work is a one-hour documentary portrait of a Croatian island resort built in 1962, entitled Guest House Helios.
