Critics Campus 2025 participant Amelia Leonard speaks to Alex Ross Perry about the legacy of video stores and physical media, and the homage his documentary Videoheaven pays to this lost world.

Anyone born before the 2000s likely remembers the ritual: stepping into a video store; walking through rows upon rows of tapes and DVDs; slowly perusing covers; trying to decipher from box art and blurb whether this was the one to take home. The process was tactile, curatorial – communal, even. In Videoheaven (MIFF 2025), Alex Ross Perry excavates these memories through an intricate cinematic archive. Drawing from a vast array of film and television excerpts, the documentary charts the rise and fall of the video store and how it functioned as a cultural space of social exchange and discovery.

I sat down with Perry to discuss the decade-long effort behind the project and the enduring significance of physical media.

Before we get into the film, I’d like to ask about your time at Kim’s Video in Manhattan. How pivotal was that for your work?

Oh, it was invaluable. The community, the people, the customers – a number of the employees are people that I work with to this day. The editor of Pavements (MIFF 2025) was a Kim’s guy. The cinematographer of six of my films and many music videos was a Kim’s guy. That community became a big part of everything right away. Up until that point, as a movie lover, I only knew the continent I grew up on – not in terms of international cinema, but that there are thousands of movies not on lists, not on the film school curriculum, not in Blockbuster. Getting to see just how much more was out there was very important.

You began developing Videoheaven in 2014, inspired by Daniel Herbert’s book Videoland. How did you two meet?

I think I read a review of his book in a film magazine. After reading it I wrote to him as a fan. He works for a university, so he brought me out to his school, where we screened some films, watched a lot of clips and talked about what the movie could be. For about three years, we would speak sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequently. Eventually, he said, “If we’re making this together, I will slow this down – and I think if I release you from needing to [check in with] me about everything, you will finish it sooner." And that was still six years ago.

Your other key collaborator was your editor, Clyde Folley. Watching the film, it’s obvious what an insanely meticulous editing process this must have been.

[With Clyde], I felt I had the freedom to take the movie to the next level, where it wasn’t just being compiled. Every clip had to be in perfect harmony with the point being made. So we went through all 150-plus clips, looked at every line of our essay, every paragraph, and made sure that whatever you’re seeing or hearing is undeniably the best choice out of our clips to prove that point. The process just took time.

You and Clyde are both fans of 80s horror. It’s interesting that, without this film, it’s unlikely audiences would get to see these titles in larger cinematic spaces. Are there any titles you feel deserve a second viewing?

Any good essay film gives you movies to watch. I certainly have my own top 10; but, with over 150 movies and TV shows, no two people should walk away with the same watchlist. Some might say, “Oh, these comedies seem great,” while others might go for Demon Seed (1977) or Video Violence (1987). My recommendations would be almost exclusively from the 80s or 90s.

Did you always see Maya Hawke narrating the film?

Originally, it seemed clever to have as many different actors as the movie has chapters: you’d see someone like Liv Tyler play a clerk in one scene, and then hear their voice an hour later. It was overly ambitious. With Maya, it just seemed like fate. Essay films and historical films in general are rarely narrated by women – and, if they are, it’s usually as one of several voices. Typically, a movie like this would be narrated by a guy befitting a sort of nerdy, esoteric tone. It felt like a clever inversion of this expectation. But, fundamentally, I needed a voice you could listen to for three hours. I felt I could do no better.

Towards the end of Videoheaven, you frame the death of the video store within the post-apocalyptic landscape of I Am Legend (2007). It made me think about the continual erasure of third spaces. How do you feel that affects our sense of taste and curation?

In a way, that’s entirely what the movie is about: watching something that existed as a space for generations slowly go away. But I’m not as pessimistic as some. Though hanging out at video stores was very special, platforms like Letterboxd provide [film discovery] for 100 times as many people. It’s not the same, but it’s a continuation of a once physical, now somewhat vanished experience.

Do you feel optimistic about the resurgence of physical media among younger audiences?

I guess I have to, because all I see is proof that it’s tangibly happening. But although young people are buying Blu-rays [and] companies are popping up every day, it’s never going to come within a hundred miles of what it was. Acknowledging that but focusing on what is out there is the path forward for film discovery, whether the spaces are tangible or digital.

Videoheaven screened as part of the MIFF 2025 program.

The above has been written as part of MIFF’s Critics Campus program. The opinion expressed is the author’s and does not necessarily reflect that of the festival.