ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a closer look at Night Lodgers, which revisits the ruin of the Grande Hotel in Beira, a former colonial luxury hotel now abandoned and long used as a provisionary shelter by war refugees and displaced persons, among others. It discusses the thought on Azevedo's film and question how the former staff members are portrayed and thus produced cinematographically as historical witnesses, that is, as someone who tells his or her experiences in front of the camera to inform viewers of a certain vision of the past. The chapter examines how the ruin of the hotel is framed through cinematographic means and addressed as an emblematic site where a complex past of ‘opulence and excitement’ is confronted with marginalization or stories of loss and suffering.
