Behind the Screen: SECRET MALL APARTMENT with Director Jeremy Workman and Artist/Resident Michael Townsend
2025-04-13 12:30 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
Directed by Jeremy Workman
Starring Michael Townsend, Colin Bliss, Adriana Valdez-Young, Andrew Oesch, James J.A. Mercer
Film and Post-Screening Discussion with:
Jeremy Workman, Director
Michael Townsend, Artist and onetime mall resident
Nate Harrison, Dean of Academic Affairs, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University
In 2003, eight young Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment in a hidden space inside the Providence Place Mall and lived in it for four years, filming everything along the way. They snuck in furniture, tapped into the mall’s electricity, and even secretly constructed a brick wall with a locking door, smuggling in over 2 tons of cinderblock. Far more than just a wild prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all its inhabitants – a personal expression of defiance against local gentrification, a boundary-pushing work of public/private art, a clubhouse to coordinate their artistic charity, and finally, a 750 square foot space that sticks it to the man.
JEREMY WORKMAN
Emmy-nominated director of the documentaries SECRET MALL APARTMENT (Executive Produced by Jesse Eisenberg), LILY TOPPLES THE WORLD (Discovery), DECIDING VOTE (Oscar-shortlisted Best Documentary Short), THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET (Greenwich Entertainment / Kino Lorber), and MAGICAL UNIVERSE (IFC Films). Jeremy’s documentaries have played at prestigious film festivals and been released in theaters and on TV across the globe. He has been praised for creating his own genre of uniquely cinematic character portraits that bring viewers deep inside extraordinary worlds.
MICHAEL TOWNSEND
Providence, RI artist known as “that guy that lived in a mall” and “that guy who invented Tape Art.” He has made over 500 temporary tape art murals on buildings all over the world, has taught collaborative drawing to over 60,000 students, and still sneaks in the time to make large secret artworks that no one will ever see.
NATE HARRISON
Dean of Academic Affairs, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and a Professor of the Practice. An artist and writer working at the intersection of intellectual property, cultural production and the formation of creative processes in modern media, Nate’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Kunstverein in Hamburg, among others.
