Today on KIOS at the Movies, host Joshua LaBure is joined by writer and film critic Genevieve Radosti to review two new documentaries from Alex Ross Perry: Videoheaven and Pavements.
Read Genevieve Radosti‘s full review of Pavements here.
Videoheaven
I often see movies as a kind of collective memory — a way to manipulate time, capture a moment, or express something ephemeral. In the sprawling new documentary Videoheaven by Alex Ross Perry, that idea is explored through a thoughtful essayistic narration by Maya Hawke, over scenes from over 100 films set in video stores — from Hamlet (the 90s version with Ethan Hawke) to Clerks, and maybe the first to ever feature one: Brian De Palma’s Body Double, as well prime time T.V. shows like Seinfeld and Dawson’s Creek.
Video stores were once a ubiquitous part of American life in the ’80s, ’90s, and early aughts. But that landscape has drastically shifted with the rise of streaming and the collapse of physical media. If you’re anything like me, a large part of your weekend used to involve grabbing food and wandering the aisles of a video store, looking for something to watch.
What Videoheaven captures so beautifully is how video stores meant different things to different people. For most, they were just a way to unwind or kill time at the end of the week — something to do, a way to be entertained. For others, it was a quick social outing. It was cheaper than going to the theater, but still a way to stay in the cultural conversation — a new release was something to talk about.
For people like me, the video store was a place of discovery. I loved it so much I worked at my local Blockbuster just to be surrounded by the art form I was obsessed with. It gave me a chance to talk about movies all day, to connect with others over that shared love (Although most of the time I felt like I was telling people about the new releases being out of stock) — but every now and then, maybe help someone find something that would become a favorite — or something that would challenge.
Videoheaven is long and dense, but never boring, it’s almost hypnotic in the way it travels through landscape of a world that no-longer exists in our every day lives — a quality it shares with other documentaries about cinema, like We Kill for Love, an exhaustive three-hour exploration of erotic thrillers from the ’80s and ’90s, and Los Angeles Plays Itself, which examines the city through a cinematic lens. These films, like Videoheaven, use the discussion of movies — whether as art or cultural artifact — as a way to explore society itself. In talking about how we portray the world on screen, they reveal how we see ourselves.
Within the frames of Videoheaven, I was reminded of how I first fell in love with movies — and how much I miss having a space for quick, casual interactions about the art form I love most. The film also made me consider how media depictions of video stores may have, in some strange way, contributed to their own decline — demonizing them even as they faded from relevance — now that they’re gone, it’s clear they were at the very least taken for granted.
Still, a few survive: Vidiots in LA, Scarecrow in Seattle (which has over 150,000 titles whereas Netflix boasts around 7,000), Videodrome in Atlanta, and of course, the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. Videoheaven has me thinking I need to plan a long road trip.
