Secret Mall Apartment ★★★1/2

Availability: Showing widely in North American theaters (mainly independent ones). There is no streaming information at this time; see JustWatch here for future streaming availability.

In the Belly of the Mall

A 2007 “breaking news” segment on local TV in Providence, Rhode Island, led with the report that mall police had discovered a secret apartment in the 1.4 million-square-foot indoor, downtown Providence Place, and inside it, 36-year-old art teacher Michael Townsend. The 750-square-foot apartment in the hidden reaches of the mall was developed over 4 years by Townsend and 7 local 20-something artists. Complete with couches, lamps, tables, chairs, a hutch, an “entertainment center” (PlayStation), and with plans for wood floors and a bathroom, the furnishing of the apartment alone makes for a great caper film. As they say in the news, there’s more to the story.

Two of the mall "conspirators" enjoying the fruits of their labors:

Colin Bliss at the PlayStation, aka "Entertainment Center," and Greta Scheing on her phone.

The idea of the apartment began with a one-week “Mall Stay” several of the group had planned, a stay that included taking in all the mall cinema’s movies, eating leftovers from the food court, and finding a place to sleep—in part their protest against the behemoth mall’s first step in the destruction of the city’s industrial heritage. It’s an unmitigated pleasure to watch these 8 men and women shop at the Salvation Army, carry furniture up a steep metal staircase and through narrow passageways, pass through prohibited doorways, triggering alarms or not, and almost never be confronted (but having a ready alibi if they are). One can feel the physicality of what they accomplish as part of their commitment to the project, even as their goals—to the extent they have any—are ever-evolving.

Interviewed 17 years later, the once-young enthusiasts raise difficult issues surrounding urban redevelopment: the destruction of the old to build the new, which itself will deteriorate (the mall has been in receivership but survives in some limited fashion); the role of consumer capitalism as spectacle; inequality of income (the mall physically turns its back on its nearby poorer neighbors, who can’t afford to shop there); authenticity of experience vis-à-vis the mall as simulacra; the virtue of impermanence; the pleasures of nesting, of literally making a home; the use of “negative space”; and most importantly, creating a place for creativity.

The apartment, as Michael’s mother describes it, is performance art and installation art, and it’s a staging area for the group’s major art projects—“tape art” designs for the walls of a children’s hospital, commemoration of the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing, memorials to each person who died in New York City in the tragedy of 9/11.

Townsend, a decade or so older than the others and a teacher of some of them, is the spark for everything produced by the “collective” (they don’t call themselves that). He’s low-key charismatic, one might even say brilliant. He’s the one who watched—from his home in the former mill area of East Providence—the construction of the mall, and was able to figure out from a long distance that the completed mall would contain a “negative space,” unintended but usable. And, he thought, inhabitable.

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The dedication of the narrative to the incremental furnishing of the secret mall apartment and to the joys of occupation loses its way a bit when it becomes a kind of biography of Townsend.

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The dedication of the narrative to the incremental furnishing of the secret mall apartment and to the joys of occupation loses its way a bit when it becomes a kind of biography of Townsend. Yet his art and his artworks are captivating. Well before the apartment project, he had created life-size paper mâché figures and placed them under a railroad overpass—a place so secretive only those who knew a special passageway could see the extensive work. Townsend’s commitments to the secretive and to the evanescent and ephemeral are well-established before the apartment is an inchoate idea in his mind.

After the disclosure of the hidden apartment, Townsend was approached by several producers and directors who wanted to tell that story. He waited until he found one who would include the art projects as well. Experienced documentary filmmaker Jeremy Workman was willing to work with the artist and art teacher on his vision, and the result is compelling, in part because the art projects—all of them in public spaces of some sort—are of artistic and social significance. Grant credit too to Jesse Eisenberg as the Executive Producer (he had the same role in Workman’s 2018, “The World Beneath Your Feet,” which followed Matt Green, who was walking every block in New York City, all 8,000 miles).

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The conspirators were documentarians of a sort, capturing photos and videos with an inexpensive, low-resolution Pentax Optio point-and-shoot camera.

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Workman adroitly uses multiple techniques to enhance the already intriguing story. The conspirators were documentarians of a sort, capturing photos and videos with an inexpensive, low-resolution Pentax Optio point-and-shoot camera, purchased at the mall’s Radio Shack and concealed in an Altoids tin. He interviews the principals as well as Townsend’s mother, brother, ex-wife and current girlfriend (curiously, neither of the latter 2 “gets” Townsend the artist), 4 of whom reveal they still have the apartment key on their key chains. Interspersed are a few other talking heads, among them artists and leaders of arts organizations, some of whom praise the apartment project, while one or two find it rather puzzling.

Archival video establishes the geographical and cultural setting of the mall and the apartment: old clips of Providence city promotions, an interview with Mayor Buddy Cianci and a mall executive, the massive structure under construction, rock concerts in nearby abandoned mill buildings. In a large indoor space, an art professor and her students recreate the apartment, where actors play the roles of the artists, the mall cops and, in the denouement, Townsend and a friend getting “caught” in the apartment, with Townsend playfully imagining various get-away scenarios.

What’s missing is any discussion of the sociology of the collective. Like roommates anywhere, they must have had disagreements. Who left the pizza boxes on the floor? Who didn’t lock the door? Who gets the couch? Who didn’t want to go on the road trip to Oklahoma City? Not a shred of unease or conflict is allowed to creep into this hagiographic recounting.

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The film is a celebration, joyfully recalling the collective and what it achieved.

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As a caper film, “Secret Mall Apartment” works, even though Townsend eschews any pleasure in deceiving the 24/7 mall security apparatus. That’s not what he’s about. The film is a celebration, joyfully recalling the collective and what it achieved, the creation of a home that’s both physical and psychological (just ask Townsend’s ex-wife). It’s a gem of a documentary. Though the material result of the group’s efforts proved impermanent, the spirit endures.

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She says: This documentary speaks eloquently to all of us who have spent significant time in post-industrial cities. It raises the issue of what the “post” period has done to these once-venerated sites, and at the same time shares the joy of exploring that complex, and to some of us, beguiling, landscape.

He says: An ode to all the kids who built a cardboard fort in the living room.

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Date: 2024

Director: Jeremy Workman

Starring: As themselves, Michael Townsend, Colin Bliss, Adriana Valdez-Young, Andrew Oesch, James J.A. Mercer, Greta Scheing, Jay Zehngebot, Emily Ustach (The film is the first time participants other than Townsend have identified themselves.)

Country: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 96 minutes

Other Awards: 9 wins and 5 other nominations, mostly at local film festivals and including one nomination at SXSW