Love at the Twilight Motel is an engaging documentary about the booming hourly motel business along S.W. 8th Street in Miami, Florida that houses 20 of the so-called "sex motels". While locals know all about the seedy goings-on behind the fences and shrubs that hide the buildings (and its occupants) from the street, Toronto-based director Alison Rose came across Miami's dirty secret by way of Fidel Castro's estranged daughter, Alina.

"I was doing research for a political film about the future of Cuba after Castro and was in Miami [speaking with] the Cuban-American community," Rose says. "[Alina] was driving along S.W. 8th Street and we were passing motels and she said casually, 'These motels look like ordinary motels but they have mirrors on the ceiling and rent rooms by the hour, and they're for sex.' A combination of my nervousness, my agenda, my expectations about a woman who was the daughter of Fidel Castro, and the fact that I had never been with someone who pointed out hourly motels to me...all of those things really startled me and got my attention."

Rose photographed the buildings before heading home and pitched the idea to the producer she was working with at the time. It didn't fit in his film but Rose knew it was an important subject, and with the encouragement of a girlfriend who teaches at Ryerson University, she decided to move forward with it on her own.

"I was really interested in learning about them [the motels]. I was curious about the fact that they were central to the city. They were built as tourist motels and became hourly motels when Miami became predominantly Latin American," she notes.

Even though she was initially nervous and scared, Rose stayed in a motel for weeks at time to observe people coming and going, and also to get to know the staff. This eased her fears and eventually lead to her getting permission from the owners to film inside the motel.

"Having permission to film, I learned painfully, is not the same as having access," she says. "I tried really hard to ask people for interviews in the motel in the politest possible way and all I succeeded in doing was driving them away. Business declined. I realized that the people who were going to talk were only people who wanted to talk. So instead of asking I started inviting people who had a story to tell to find me. And that's what worked. I placed ads in different publications and postcards in bars," she explains.

The people who did speak on-camera vary from a husband who uses the rooms to have sex with prostitutes during his lunch hour to a single man who only sleeps with married women. There's a person who uses the room to shoot heroin and an overweight escort. Over the course of the two years Rose spent filming she learned that most of the people who frequent the motels "are like you and me."

"They come from all walks of life. There was an Orthodox Jewish man who came regularly, and eventually propositioned me. I spoke with a guy who lived with his grandmother so he came to the motel with his girlfriend because he couldn't bring her [home]," she says.

Since filming Love at the Twilight Motel Rose has been informed that all motels in Korea are hourly, and in Japan these types of facilities are called "Japanese Love Hotels". Closer to home she was told about one on Highway 7 that had a third floor added due to the overwhelming demand for the rooms.

Love at the Twilight Motel recently won the Best Documentary award at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto and is set to play at The Royal on April 10 and 11, and at Revue Cinema on April 14 and 15. Rose will be doing a Q & A after each screening.

brian.mckechnie@citynews.rogers.com

Top image: A still from Love at the Twilight Motel. Courtesy Inigo Films.