When I first saw the poster online for the film, "Secret Mall Apartment" I thought, "That looks boring. What is this film even supposed to be about?" But my condescending kneejerk judgement, and my limited window of time, brought me to watch this film during a short visit to Salt Lake City. This experience in the theater did not change my life, but it had interesting moments I was happy about.
"Secret Mall Apartment" is a plucky underground documentary about a group of adult friends in Providence, Rhode Island who discover an empty, windowless storage room inside a giant shopping mall and build an apartment for themselves in this hidden space. Sneaking second had furniture and extension cords through back doors and maintenance halls, this group of friends moved into their makeshift apartment in 2003 and lived there undetected for four years. The location of this unique crime is Providence Place Mall, a 3.5 million square foot building that opened in 1999 and still exists today.
Even though this real-life story happened decades ago, it has obvious correlations to serious issues happening today. More and more people are struggling to find affordable housing, the ripple effects of gentrification push people out of neighborhoods after years of residency, and the gap of income inequality only seems to be growing.
In what I think is an effort to avoid sounding preachy or bombastic, this documentary is not focused much on social justice or making an anti-establishment call to arms pushing against the greedy forces of corporate America. No! "Secret Mall Apartment" is more about shining a light on an overlooked collection of artists and craftspeople simply looking for a fanciful outlet to be creative together.
This collection of artists documented their clandestine project with a tiny, low-resolution, digital camera, so this archival footage adds a lot of fun to the film like an underdog heist movie. What turns out to be the most interesting part of this is the portrait of Michael Townsend, the leader of this apartment adventure and creator of hundreds of temporary art installations using rolls and rolls of masking tape. His life, and the ideas he's brought into it, are what make this documentary special. His work reminds us of the importance of visual art and the changes it can make for good in the 21st century.
I know most documentary feature films have roughly the same length of an hour and a half, but I wish this film were a bit longer than its 90-minute run time, because a few questions are left unanswered. Where did these illegal tenants take showers? (Not in a shopping mall.) Did any of the artsy friends struggle with homelessness themselves before creating this apartment? How did the shopping mall security team finally catch Michael Townsend and locate the hidden apartment? What is the status of the hidden apartment now? What kind of lives are all these friends living today?
The amount of information is lacking and lopsided in this documentary (Could we explore more examples of Rhode Island's gentrification? And where do these adventurous friends live now?) But the ideas it presents are definitely inventive enough to get audiences talking especially about the changes happening in our cities.
