Still Rolling

I grew up sneaking through my hometown’s video rental store. My mother brought me in when I was young, but I wasn’t allowed past the Disney section—the place was 18+. I went back every other day anyway. Each visit I’d slip a few cassettes further: past the action films, past the erotic thrillers, until I was standing innocently in the adult section, fundamentally changed by something I didn’t fully understand yet.

VHS was my world. Friday the 13th with my friends, The Lion King on loop, recording everything off television onto cassettes. I was living in tape. Then without noticing, VHS was just gone. DVD took over and I never even registered the shift.

There’s a series on Arte called VideoHunterS. Director Daniel Hyan and his friend Bart drive around Germany meeting people for whom VHS is still everything. They find the collectors, the ones who never stopped, who still load tape into their machines. Watching it made me want to buy a VCR right now and start accumulating again.