Fifty years ago, the introduction of VHS to the consumer market revolutionized the way people watched movies, bringing classics, the latest hits, obscure cult favorites, underground bootlegs, and disreputable marginalia alike into their homes with hitherto unimaginable convenience. This ode to analog traces the ripple effect that VHS had on the wider pop-culture landscape and imagination—from the rise of video-store culture in the 1980s and ’90s (CLERKS, THE WATERMELON WOMAN) to the often obsessive nature of home recording (SPEAKING PARTS, BENNY’S VIDEO) to the disturbing results of transgressive images invading the domestic space (VIDEODROME, RING). Together they comprise a panoramic meta-history of the distinctively grainy, static-flecked medium that forever altered our relationship to the moving image.

Programmed by Clyde Folley.

Featuring:
VIDEODROME (David Cronenberg, 1983)
BODY DOUBLE (Brian De Palma, 1984)
52 PICK-UP (John Frankenheimer, 1986)
RE-WIND (Hisayasu Sato, 1988)
REMOTE CONTROL (Jeff Lieberman, 1988)
SPEAKING PARTS (Atom Egoyan, 1989)
THE FISHER KING (Terry Gilliam, 1991)
BENNY’S VIDEO (Michael Haneke, 1992)
CLERKS (Kevin Smith, 1994)
THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
LOST HIGHWAY (David Lynch, 1997)
THE BIG HIT (Kirk Wong, 1998)
RING (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
BLEEDER (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1999)
THE RING (Gore Verbinski, 2002)
VIDEOHEAVEN (Alex Ross Perry, 2025)