VHS Forever
8 Episodes
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.
-
2:52:08Episode 1Videoheaven
Episode 1
Directed by Alex Ross Perry • 2025 • United States
Cultural hub, consumer mecca, and source of existential dread: the video-rental store forever changed the way we interact with movies. With narration by Maya Hawke and footage culled from hundreds of sources—from TV commercials to blockbuster fi...
-
Ring
Episode 2
Directed by Hideo Nakata • 1998 • Japan
Starring Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki NakataniThe film that launched the craze for J-horror in the West, director Hideo Nakata’s international sensation melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of techn...
-
Bleeder
Episode 3
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn • 1999 • Denmark
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Kim Bodnia, Liv CorfixenOn the gritty margins of Copenhagen, two friends drift apart as violence and obsession take hold. Disaffected alcoholic Leo (Kim Bodnia) struggles with a crumbling relationship and growing rage, w...
-
Re-Wind
Episode 4
Directed by Hisayasu Sato • 1988 • Japan
Starring Kiyomi Ito, Kazuhiro Sano, Sayaka HitomiOne of the most esteemed and transgressive filmmakers ever to work in Japan’s explosively popular pink film genre, Hisayasu Sato crafted erotic films that were both genre-defying and artful. While Sato’s w...
-
1:28:11Episode 5Remote Control
Episode 5
Directed by Jeff Lieberman • 1988 • United States
Starring Kevin Dillon, Deborah Goodrich, Jennifer TillyCult director Jeff Lieberman (BLUE SUNSHINE, JUST BEFORE DAWN) pays homage to the heyday of 1950s science fiction with a sublimely schlocky, awesomely ’80s alien-invasion satire. When video-...
-
1:25:03Episode 6The Watermelon Woman
Episode 6
Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie WalkerThe wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...
-
2:14:50Episode 7Lost Highway
Episode 7
Directed by David Lynch • 1997 • United States
Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity, LOST HIGHWAY, David Lynch’s seventh feature film, is one of the filmmaker’s most potent cinemati...
-
1:50:02Episode 8Benny’s Video
Episode 8
Directed by Michael Haneke • 1992 • Austria
Starring Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich MüheMichael Haneke turns the unflinching gaze of the camera back on itself in this provocative, profoundly disturbing study of emotional disconnection in the age of mass-media saturation. Benny (a frighteni...
