The filmmakers' first feature documentary -
Endorsed by the National Coalition for the Homeless

'First-time feature filmmaker Eric Lahey's stirring portrait of life inside a Portland single room occupancy hotel is as visually mesmerizing as it is emotionally riveting. Tenderly documenting the shattered and fascinating souls that occupy the Century Plaza, Lahey's camera, like a mute, watchful ghost, moves from room to room, life to life, always trailing the film's silent narrator, a large orange cat named Rico. While the Plaza's occupants range from an elderly psychotic to a reflective prostitute to a recent immigrant, they all share in the struggle against a rising tide of poverty that is the dark underbelly of the American experience.' - Los Angeles Film Festival

What the critics are saying about THE CENTURY PLAZA.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Kevin Crust calls it "expressionistic and compassionate."

"Eric Lahey's expressionistic documentary The Century Plaza is a compassionate film that profiles a group of inhabitants at an SRO (Single Resident Occupancy) hotel in downtown Portland, Ore. Mainly transients whose lives have been scarred by mental illness and substance abuse, the residents suffer from what one called 'a long boredom, broken by periods of panic.' Lahey shows great compassion for his subjects, but maintains a requisite level of distance in rendering their lives in what at times appears to be a Francis Bacon painting come to life. Disturbing as it is, seeing these people live a step from homelessness strikes a poignant chord." - Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

LA WEEKLY
Ella Taylor gave it a "GO!"

In the dingy, roach-infested gloom of a formerly ritzy Portland hotel, the forgotten people we call single room occupants eke out precarious lives. Director Eric Lahey, whose drug-addicted father lived in such a setting, means to bring specificity and warmth to the chilly term "the homeless," and indeed they're a remarkably diverse bunch, among them an elderly recluse reading his way toward an understanding of death; a Mormon crackhead who rooms with an articulate immigrant from Bangalore; and, most poignant of all, a self-aware sex offender wracked by guilt and unable to find housing. Only the house cat endures, but believe me, there's little consolation in that. (ET)

LOS ANGELES CITY BEAT
Andy Klein feels it is "moving without forgoing an often poetic visual style."

The Century Plaza: The title refers, not to our local upscale development, but rather to a rundown Portland hotel, where junkies, ex-cons, and psychos rub shoulders with people who are just down on their luck. It's an SRO building -- "single room occupancy" -- a type of hostelry that is rapidly disappearing, raising the question "Where will these people live then?" Director Eric Lahey's camera prowls the hallways, often seeming to follow the path of the only inhabitant with access to all the rooms -- Rico, a cat who belongs to everyone and no one. Most of the people we meet have hopes of escaping this squalor, and it's clear that most of them never will. Lahey manages to delineate a good dozen or so characters -- though the end crawl makes it clear that what we've seen is only the surface of their lives -- without forgoing an often poetic visual style. The result is moving and more than a little downbeat. (AK)