Many have been trumpeting the announcement of their death for quite some time now. Never mind: Le Devoir had made an appointment with two nostalgic for the video club in one of the last Gallic villages, located on the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal, even if a sign “For sale” sat sadly in the window. . The meteoric rise of streaming platforms had sealed their fate; two years of pandemic sounded the death knell.
What remains of our love for the VHS tape and later the DVD? Since the 1980s in Quebec, new generations of moviegoers have fed their imaginations more in their living rooms, abandoning dark rooms, many of which have suffered a fate comparable to that of video clubs. The experience of the seventh art, at first collective, initially transformed by television, corresponds more and more to a discreet adventure, with reduced screens, compared to the great era of cinemascope.
These places, sometimes dark and cramped, sometimes vast and lit like department stores, contain a host of memories for those who have frequented them or who have worked there. Some of them were kind enough to tell us about their memories, and above all to reflect on what this frequentation has changed in their vision of the world and of cinema.
Not always “tons of copies”
Some have experienced the abundance of supermarkets, others the modesty of wobbly and bare shelves in convenience stores. This is the case of filmmaker Annie St-Pierre, whose latest short film, The big slapshas had a tremendous international trajectory since its launch at Sundance in January 2021. The video club of her childhood, in Rivière-du-Loup, the one where she and her sister always borrowed the same films, including dirty dancing (“I’m a little ashamed when I think about it!”), she will work on it later.
In front of or behind the counter, the director of Farmers dreamed of studying cinema in Montreal, but did not have access to many films to maintain this dream, even if it remained “a universe that could [l’]bring everywhere”. To her clients, she did not dictate the choices, let alone judge them. Once in the metropolis, there was an overabundance, for example at the now legendary Black Box, which she remembers with a certain vertigo. “There was a time when I could walk in there at 8 p.m. and walk out at closing time…without a movie. If unfortunately I made a bad choice, I watched the film until the end to understand what I didn’t like. It was a school in itself. »
Individual or couple experience for some, the visit to the video club evokes for others a spirit of community, illustrated with candor by Michel Gondry (Video on demandFrench version of Be Kind Rewind) or in a crazy style by Kevin Smith (Committed in madnessFrench version of Clerks). Same thing for Bernard Perron, professor of film studies at the University of Montreal, very interested in the world of video games and horror cinema. He feels an obvious nostalgia, he who fraternized easily with other customers and employees.
A subscriber to several clubs all over Montreal, the soon-to-be college cinephile was as much in search of classics and genre films as children’s films, to entertain his family. If he had a close relationship with the staff, it was not so much for advice as for the pleasure of exchanging, in particular on the cinema. “The video club looked like a grocery store to me,” says the zombie movie enthusiast. I knew the sections, I knew where to go. There was a living relationship to the cinema and a physical relationship to the works that we no longer find. »
There was a time when I could get in there at 8 p.m. and get out at closing time…without a movie. If unfortunately I made a bad choice, I watched the film until the end to understand what I didn’t like. It was a school in itself.
The Plateau, this world apart
Caroline Rompré, director of pixelleX communications, and Olivier Bilodeau, director of programming for Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, share this observation entirely. In another life, they worked at the SuperClub Videotron located on Mont-Royal Avenue and directed with devotion by Roland Smith, the one who marked generations of moviegoers. Surrounded by DVDs, between two narrow rows of the Cinoche Vidéo, the girl from Abitibi and the guy born in Beauce have bright eyes when they look back on their years as customers, and later as employees.
Of course, they remember the rarity of titles in establishments in their corner of the country, and the cavern side of Ali Baba displayed by certain Montreal video clubs. They didn’t need their hand to be held either, devouring entire filmographies, always eager for discovery, an attitude which of course colored their relationships with clients. “I didn’t judge them, assures Olivier Bilodeau, but I didn’t like narrow people, confined to a single genre. »
“Our clientele was too diverse for us to be able to judge anyone,” continues Caroline Rompré. Indeed, made up of actors, filmmakers, journalists, frenetic moviegoers, lovers of blockbustersthe fauna was diversified, which earned the Homework a tasty succession of anecdotes impossible to reproduce here. “It’s still the Plateau!” summarizes Bilodeau.
The former colleagues recognize that they evolved in a singular ecosystem, witnesses of a bulimic or meticulous consumption of the seventh art. They also know that their own relationship to the cinema is not quite the same as that of previous generations, those who frequented repertory halls. Quentin Tarantino is the emblematic example of the cinephile trained in the video club. “The ultimate example, according to Olivier Bilodeau, who discovered hot water frette water by André Forcier in a VHS vending machine in Quebec. Where could he have seen all the Asian films that we recognize in Kill Bill ? For his part, Bernard Perron wonders in which Montreal cinema he could have discovered all the Russian films he likes today.
This fervor, especially for a certain American commercial cinema, has not only advantages, according to Annie St-Pierre. “On the covers of the rare subtitled films of the video club where I worked, it was necessary to add the mention: “Small letters at the bottom of the screen”. Nothing to make people want to explore foreign cinema. And what about the documentary? “The video club had very few, to the point where I wondered if I could become a filmmaker, because I didn’t want to make the type of cinema that was offered there. Fortunately, at UQAM, I took Jean-Pierre Masse’s course on documentaries, which allowed me to broaden my horizons. »
Could the video club atrophy the gaze in front of films intended for the big screen but failing on increasingly small devices? Bernard Perron and Olivier Bilodeau believe so. “How many students have analyzed films in “ full-screen » [l’image recouvrant l’entièreté de l’écran télé] — rather than wide-screen » [le cadre panoramique de l’image, comme il a été pensé pour le cinéma] ? said Bernard Perron.
Their culture has been shaped by the full-screen which reduces the film to a narrative experience rather than an aesthetic one. For Olivier Bilodeau, who was one of the founders of the Quebec City Film Festival, educational work had to be done. “I made a demo to illustrate the difference, because I was tired of hearing customers tell me: ‘The screen is full, so I’m not missing images!’ »
For these four former video store customers and employees, those days were glorious in many ways. Although they are aware that the march of time cannot be stopped, their cinephilic debt to these now ghostly places continues to be immense, for they have shaped what they have become. “When I arrived in Montreal, at the SuperClub Videotron, I was surrounded by moviegoers, and I still am, which shows the consistency of my career,” emphasizes Caroline Rompré. For her and for so many others, it’s a bit like seeing her life on video.