The Rhode Island documentary we’ve been waiting for

Remember the time a group of artists built a secret apartment inside the Providence Place mall and lived there (rent-free) for parts of four years?

Their story is about to make the big screen.

On March 8, South by Southwest will show the world premiere of “Secret Mall Apartment,” a documentary on the project that captured attention across the globe after Michael Townsend and his friends were caught by mall security in 2007. (Townsend was banned for life from the mall. Talk about a soul-crushing penalty … if he had been a 13-year-old.)

It turns out that the artists filmed...