Jasper Mall
by Karen Pecota

Filmmaking team Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb, known for films that study pop culture and nostalgia, follow the impact that a dying shopping mall has on its surrounding community in Jasper Mall. Thomason and Whitcomb chronicle a whole year in the life of a dying shopping mall, its patrons and its tenants.

The duo acknowledges, "There's no denying retro malls are having a moment. Between the setting of the new season of "Stranger Things" and the countless videos of dead mall tours gathering millions of plays on YouTube, the mystique of the "mall" is everywhere.”

Thomason and Whitcomb were children of the '80s and '90s when hanging out at an American shopping mall was everything. The atmosphere was not only for shopping but the bigger the better of what to experience was an adventure: the stores, the corridors, the fountains, the food courts, the arcades, the theaters and special events. Over time this generation not only grew-up but sought other avenues for the shopping adventure.

Today, the malls are slowly fading away and the filmmakers felt it important to take a look at this once booming enterprise, both financially and socially, to dissect the reality of the American mall and what hovers over so many closures of malls across the United States.

Thomason and Whitcomb say, "It's a community on the brink of disappearance, and yet around every corner, there exists a strange beauty and a new kind of Americana." The story they tell reflects on the results of a changing society and how they do business. In spite of the Internet age, the endearing, heartbreaking, and sometimes comical stories come from the local mall supporters who reflect on the good memories of their nostalgia and refuse to give up on their dream of the mall resurgence appropriate for the times.