To Thank the Room

Maggie Fooke set up the 10 room Brooklyn Arts Hotel in downtown Fitzroy as a guest accommodation for 'artists and lovers of the arts of all kinds - including conversation, activism and philosophy' to stay, when visiting Melbourne.

It was rather a well-kept secret, but Maggie and Brooklyn clocked up 25000 guests stays over 13 years of operation - many of those return visits.

In late 2019, Maggie emailed her regulars that she had reached the decision to sell the building and close the hotel. And that there would be a film. Join in and help me document Brooklyn's last 100 days, she wrote.

TO THANK THE ROOM is that film: documenting the courageous and compelling Maggie Fooke, along with her soft-voiced housekeeper Helen MacKay and Maggie's feisty also-arts-focussed daughter Aphrodite through the final days of this beloved and 'quirky' institution. Maggie joins others in filming ad hoc, engages guests in conversation and the filmmaking process and we the audience are alongside her intimately as she, in her original wild way, is determined - at any cost - to enjoy and share her creation to the last drop