Before filmmaker Alex Ross Perry broke out big in the indie scene, the writer/director worked at the now-famous East Village-based Kim’s Video, a video store so legendary and popular that there have been documentary tributes made about it. So it’s perhaps no surprise that Perry, known for writing and directing films like “Listen Up Philip” (2014) and “Her Smell” (2018), has made his own tribute to video store culture, influence and impact on movie audiences with the new video essay documentary “Videoheaven.”
Narrated by “Stranger Things” actress/musician Maya Hawke, whom Perry has directed two music videos for (“Missing Out,” “Dark”), “Videoheaven,” tells the story of the neighborhood video shop to consider wider, changing social histories, using appropriated footage from the high and lowbrow of cinema.
Debuting earlier this year at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Perry’s “Videoheaven” is a ten-year-in-the-making labor of love, retracing this history using solely appropriated footage from a vast array of films.
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Here’s the official synopsis:
Socio-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 over footage culled from hundreds of sources (from TV commercials to blockbuster films), Alex Ross Perry’s VIDEOHEAVEN tells the story of an industry’s glorious, confusing, novel, sometimes seedy, but undeniably seismic impact on American movie culture.
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“Videoheaven” opens at NYC’s IFC Center on July 2nd and at LA’s Vidiots on August 6th as part of a theatrical rollout. More information can be found at Cinema Conservancy.
