VIFF Review: Secret Mall Apartment

The secret apartment where eight artists lived for four years

The Vancouver International Film Festival kicked off a few days ago and I've already seen five films, all wonderful as I had hoped.

First on my list was the documentary, Secret Mall Apartment directed by Jeremy Workman. Indeed, as the title suggests, there was a secret apartment in a shopping mall in Providence, Rhode Island in the early 2000s.

Michael Townsend is an activist artist -- he believes that art is not a pretty picture, it has to have meaning, otherwise what is the point? A giant shopping mall called Providence Mall was being built in the neighbourhood he was in and as he watched it being built he could see there was a space that didn't seem to be earmarked for anything.

After the mall opened, he tried to find this space and did, telling three other artist friends about it. In the end there was a total of eight people who knew about this space, how to get there, but they had to keep it a secret.

The 750 square-foot space didn't have windows or running water, but it was a place they wanted to inhabit. So they bought furniture at thrift stores and undetected, managed to haul them into this space and live there -- for four years.

Secret Mall Apartment also talks about how these artists were influenced by Townsend, that they would facilitate art projects in a children's hospital, encouraging the young patients to make art with marking tape, and even paying tribute to the 9/11 victims by creating silhouettes of them with the marking tape around New York City.

The documentary also delves into the issues of housing, gentrification, the conflicts between developers and neighbourhoods, and displacement, by talking to people who were stakeholders when the controversial shopping mall was being approved by city hall and when it was being built.

What makes Secret Mall Apartment fascinating too is that there is proof it existed because they recorded themselves with tiny digital cameras and had some 20 hours of footage. It's grainy and not professionally shot, but it's a record of what they did, and many of the clips shown are amusing.

Apparently many people had approached Townsend about making a film about the secret apartment, but none of them were as genuine as Workman, researching not only the history of gentrification of the area, but also tracking down every one of the eight artists and finding out how much this secret apartment experience has influenced them as a person and their own art today. 

Thank goodness for Workman, who told this story beautifully, creatively and interviewed some people who were thrilled to go back in time with him.

Secret Mall Apartment

91 minutes

Directed by Jeremy Workman

Starring Michael Townsend

Developer Proposes Luxury Condos in Chinatown

The empty site sits next to Chinatown Memorial Plaza (front)

Vancouver's Chinatown is fiercely divided over what should be built on 105 Keefer Street, a plot of land that was a parking lot for many years. It is next to Chinatown Memorial Plaza, which pays tribute to the Chinese workers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Chinese-Canadian soldiers who fought for Canada in World War II.

The plot of land was bought by developer Beedie Holdings in 2013 and the following year its subsidiary Beedie Living proposed a tall building of luxury condos which would dwarf the memorial next to it, and the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden nearby.

The building plan will be discussed on Monday

Three years later the Chinatown community joined together to oppose the mixed-use, slightly shorter building proposal, even though it included a seniors centre and underground parking. After listening to hours of comments from the public, the plan was resoundingly rejected by city hall.

On Monday a revised proposal is back in front of city hall, but this time the community is divided into two camps, one all for it, the other against.

Those for it, including seven business organisations, say now that the Covid-19 pandemic is over, Chinatown is barely hanging on economically, and believe construction of these 111 luxury condo units will help revive the neighbourhood. 

Some of the groups for the plan include the Chinatown Business Improvement Association, Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, Chinese Freemasons of Vancouver, Chinese Cultural Center of Greater Vancouver, and Vancouver Chinatown Foundation.

However, those who oppose it say luxury condos don't fit into this area, where most of the residents are seniors living on pensions. They would like to see social housing on the site and culturally appropriate programming as well as architecture to integrate the building into the neighbourhood.

Seniors oppose the latest proposal from Beedie

One senior interviewed felt the voices of the elderly were being ignored and instead the government was more interested in development, leaving these vulnerable people behind. They are barely subsisting as it is financially and feel the new condos will push them out. 

Meanwhile legacy businesses like Kent's Kitchen which offered cheap food, are closing, resulting in seniors becoming even more food insecure.

A few hundred people showed up at a rally on Thursday afternoon next to the site opposing the plan, while those for it believe people living in these luxury condos will patronise the area's businesses, thus keeping them afloat.

But who will want to live in a luxury condo in Chinatown which is right next to the Downtown Eastside? It's not exactly a desired location. Affordable housing would be a better solution, but perhaps Beedie's patience has worn out and wants to recoup its costs as soon as possible.

Vancouver Chinatown's Gentrifying Pace

A marble lion defaced with spray paint

These are photographs of Vancouver's Chinese Cultural Centre.

One of a pair of marble lions was spray painted, and fires were set in the area -- for a second time -- in the same place.

2nd fire at the back of the Chinese Cultural Centre

The anti-Asian sentiment is still alive three years after the Covid-19 pandemic with no solution in sight, except to clean up the mess and hope it doesn't happen again.

Last Wednesday the City of Vancouver began clearing the sidewalks near Chinatown, forcing some 80 homeless people to seek shelter elsewhere. About a dozen of them returned but each day city workers kept coming back to remove them.

Cleaning up the area is a start, though it's troubling the city doesn't have enough places for these homeless people to live in and yet pushes them off the streets.

This evening I was in the Chinatown neighbourhood for dinner and afterwards saw two ambulances and a firetruck attending to someone possibly overdosing?

Kent's Kitchen has served the area for decades

Meanwhile it's interesting to see the area gentrifying -- there's clean modern spaces with gym equipment, a fight club around the corner that sells accessories across the street. Another ground floor space has a pottery class, and there's a restaurant that sells pizzas that are made in a mobile truck nearby complete with pizza oven.

But what's troubling is that legacy businesses are not surviving. One is called Kent's Kitchen, which has several cooked dishes on display and for about C$10, you can get a takeaway box with your choice of two of these dishes and some rice.

For many seniors, it's what they eat most days because the portions from Kent's Kitchen are large and cheap.

However at the end of this month, Kent's Kitchen is closing and then where will seniors go for cheap meals that last two or three days?

A heart-felt sign from a regular customer

The story is that the takeaway shop got notice from the landlord for a 30 percent increase in rent. There's speculation that the landlord wants to kick Kent's Kitchen out to sell the land to a developer because the lot next door is empty.

While Vancouver's Chinatown is resilient, it is slowly falling apart at the seams. While gentrification is good in keeping the neighbourhood going, what about the seniors in the area? The shops serving the goods and services they need are disappearing, while cafes and gyms are appearing.