Malls R Us - Documentary

"Malls R Us" is an interesting new documentary that will be playing at the 2009 MoMA Canadian Films Festival in NYC, 2009 International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in May.

From the site:

Combining nostalgia, dazzling architecture, pop culture, economics and politics, MALLS R US examines North America's most popular and profitable suburban destination-the enclosed shopping center-and how for consumers they function as a communal, even ceremonial experience and, for retailers, sites where their idealism, passion and greed merge.

The film blends archival footage tracing the history of the shopping mall in America, visits to some of the world's largest and most spectacular malls-in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Poland, France, and Dubai-and interviews with architects, mall developers, sales managers, environmentalists, labor activists and social critics, as well as commentary from mall shoppers themselves.

"Fascinating yet ultimately frightening... an elegant, thoughtful documentary which exposes the mindset of mallpreneurs and mall designers, from the time malls were first invented till the present, and the increasingly sophisticated, calculated effects of their manipulations."—Mark Achbar, filmmaker, The Corporation

"A monumental documentary on a global scale, Malls R Us Shows shopping malls to have a tragic and apparently irreversible effect on every dimension of moral and material life. Not only are malls the central symbol of modern auto-industrial society, they are the site of a titanic clash of civilizations and values." — Sharon Zukin, Author, "Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture", Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College and City University Graduate Center