Review: VIDEOHEAVEN

Can you remember the last time you went to a video shop as part of your domestic routine? The weekend night you weren't going out or the movie marathon you organised with your friends, or maybe on a whim a mid-week catchup with something you missed at the cinema? It really was a while back, wasn't it? You might have forgotten your local one. Mine was a place called Video Busters and had a massive floor space and a big expansive range from the latest hits to obscure continental gore fests. In 2012, I was housebound with a leg in a cast and in two months, while I was recovering, the entire block that housed that shop, the chemist and the medical clinic had all been redeveloped. The shop did re-emerge further down the road and kept up the ice cream and snacks it had been selling to keep things afloat. But a lot of the stock was on sale. I picked up a few Asian horror titles I didn't know and pretty much left it there in the street to end its life. It had gone by the close of the year.

This film is not the documentary I had assumed it would be but a deep diving essay into the market, the cultural phenomenon and the social space of the video shop through its decades long history. Instead of talking head recollections from former owners and staff, we get the flinty tones of Maya Hawke talking us through an epic three hour examination.

At first, to allow us an appreciation of it scale, we are treated to a compact history of the technology and its rapid commodification that affected both cinema attendance and tv habits to install itself as a constant rival to previous standard business. One thing that such a stretching vista omits is how a flop at the cinema could be a durable hit on home video. That surprised me.

Otherwise, the chaptered sections begin to specialise. Aspects like the social arena of the spaces and its depiction in movies and TV shows, the figure of the video store clerk in feature films as toxic cinephilic gatekeeper, the language of cinematic taste in rom coms, and the depiction of the business in popular culture as it waned against the tide of convenience offered by streaming services. Carpeted by TV and movie clips that expand from instant illustrations to a series of deep dives, the arc describes the passing of an institution by cultural change from the ground up, just as TV and home video itself had. 

I watched this as a MIFF stream on ACMI 3 and intended to slice it into digestible pieces but, after some initial resistance as I got used to the chalk and talk approach, I just let it absorb me whole with its subtle but mesmeric repetition and massive supply of quotes. Depictions of video shops in fiction were far more prevalent than I recall and chosen to provide solidity to the discourse. Instead of the nostalgic to-cameras I was worried about, I was engaged to compulsion by this revisit to a thing that folk of my age down to millennials will remember as a dependable part of the weekly roll. While, I didn't wander, check the phone or interrupt the stream for too long, I know I missed quite a few points and might well seek this on physical media to cover everything that slipped by. I know it's ironic but it suits.

Viewing notes: As I'm not buying into the stress of MIFF this year, I'm choosing very few things to see and was happy to stream this through the ACMI3 app. This looked and proved essential. I am glad I didn't have to put up with the distractions of contemporary festival audiences for three hours in a cinema but enjoyed this in the cloister of my lounge room. I'd recommend that approach.