Secret Mall Apartment is a marvelous documentary about a band of eight artists who made a secret home for years in a Providence, Rhode Island shopping mall. To mark the film’s opening, the West Newton Cinema (WNC) hosted a post-film discussion on Sunday, April 13, with director Jeremy Workman, subject and ringleader Michael Townsend, and moderator Nate Harrison (Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University).
After developers forced Townsend and other artists out of their warehouse artists commune, he and fellow artists went in search of “dead space” in the nearby, new, and sprawling Providence Place Mall. They found what they were looking for hidden between the mall’s parking garage and retail areas. Over the course of four years, 2003-2007, they furnished their hideaway and installed a door and a cinderblock wall, sneaking everything past security guards and hauling it all up a steep ladder.
Then in 2007 the apartment was discovered by two security guards, who hung out there secretly themselves for a couple weeks, drinking beer and watching TV before mall authorities in suits descended. Townsend told the WNC audience that as he was taken away, handcuffed in the back of a police car, one of the policemen said to him in all seriousness, “Good job in there.”
Townsend captured their audacious four-year project using a Pentax Optic compact digital camera that he hid in an Altoid tin. The project ended just a couple months after the iPhone was released.
Secret Mall Apartment blends elements of a caper film, a guerrilla art project, and political and social commentary. The documentary’s irresistible high spirits and playfulness goes hand-in-hand with a seriousness of purpose that Townsend embodies on the screen and in person. He is a tape artist, educator, and activist who makes public art that includes murals at children’s hospitals, schools, and Ground Zero in New York City. The film explores the struggles of artists displaced by gentrification and, by extension, society’s housing crisis and the desirability of integrating art into everyday life. It is also a call for society to support artists and a celebration of collective action.
During the post-screening discussion, Townsend recalled receiving multiple offers for film, book, and television adaptations of the story. “We spent seventeen years getting persistent interest from directors, and as time went on, their ideas about what it should be got dumber and dumber,” he said, adding, “Until we met Jeremy, we hadn’t met somebody who has a real knack for making movies about artists and making them accessible.”
Director Jeremy Workman urged people to tell others about the film. He and others involved in the making of the documentary (Jesse Eisenberg is co-producer along with Workman) decided to release Secret Mall Apartment theatrically rather than straight to streaming, as so many documentaries are presented. Their belief in the importance of a communal theatrical experience aligns perfectly with the West Newton Cinema’s commitment to showcase documentaries and documentary works-in-progress to local audiences through its Producers’ Circle Series and its mission of building community through film.
Secret Mall Apartment is currently playing at the West Newton Cinema. Screening dates and times can be found on the WNC website: https://www.westnewtoncinema.com/
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