MVFF47 - RSVP Guide

Home is where the mall is. Once touted as a convenient destination, meeting needs for shopping, dining, entertainment, and hanging out, the American mall truly became a home away from home for many. Eight imaginative artists carried the idea further: They created a secret apartment hidden within the shadows of a Providence, Rhode Island mall and squatted there for four years. Seventeen years later, the participants recall how they—partly in protest over gentrification—snuck in and set up a comfy domicile, complete with PlayStation and couches, in an out-of-the-way section in the mall. Filmmaker Jeremy Workman (Lily Topples the World) chronicles the project through the artists’ archival videos and in illuminating interviews in which they recall their close calls and the work they created in their clandestine dwelling. For its utterly fascinating glimpse at the intersection of art, civil disobedience, and mall culture, Secret Mall Apartment is worth a visit.

“I come from a family of great athletes” says young Lionel Conacher IV. His great grandfather—LC the first, also known as “The Big Train”—was such a phenomenon that he won 11 championships and was inducted into five different sports’ Halls of Fame. But the competitive “ideal man” he represented for many, and which Lionels II and III also personified, is not exactly a mold that fits this latest Conacher. After a rocky adolescence marked by “fear of being a sissy” and prescription-drug addiction, Lionel IV has embraced an identity that is queer and nonbinary, with a penchant for performance well off the playing field. This documentary draws on bounteous archival footage to chronicle a great Canadian family legacy in athletics, including interviews with Wayne Gretzky and other hockey legends. But it also makes room on the trophy shelf for a new generation’s different priorities and goals, with Lionel IV’s dad fully supportive of Junior’s “gender journey.”

Expected In Person Guest

This urgent documentary reveals the devastation inflicted on pregnant Texans, effectively barred from emergency obstetric care, due to the state’s draconian post-Roe abortion ban. Women push back, giving their suffering purpose by engaging in an epic legal battle with the state. With a maternal instinct to protect others, the three phenomenal women profiled in this indelible film share harrowing stories of loss and survival. The plaintiffs unite as they heal and move forward in their unique mothering journeys, while their attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights challenges the Texas Supreme Court to clarify medical exemptions that allow patients and their doctors to make informed choices based on medicine, not fear of retaliation. A blend of vérité scenes and courtroom footage underline the high stakes involved, especially for poor women. The movement for reproductive justice for all is gaining momentum, and these lawsuits are just the beginning.