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Hitting rewind and pressing play; a growing number of people are watching movies with a form of media from decades gone by.
“I’ve always had a pretty decent VHS collection. Not intending to collect it, it’s just what I grew up with,” Exchange Movie Exchange co-owner Paul Gubernachuk told Global News.
Gubernachuk says his passion for VHS started from creating home videos in childhood.
“I was always trying to get my hands on cameras that I could use to film me and my cameras doing crazy stuff. And back then all those cameras were VHS powered,” he said.
“I always, I guess, in a way had a respect for the media because of what it did for me in a way of holding those memories for me and my friends doing those those crazy things on camera.”
“The reason I really like VHS is because it’s such a simple format to use,” Exchange Movie Exchange co-owner Kami Goertz added.
“There is as little fuss as possible between me and the movie. I just push it in and it goes. I don’t have to buy anything, I don’t have to update anything.”
The passion for VHS tapes is what led the pair to start the movie exchange — which is run like a free book library — and Monday night VHS movie nights in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.
“We felt like we did this for ourselves because we thought it would be neat, but we realized we tapped into community all of a sudden,” Goertz said.
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Goertz and Gubernachuk say it’s largely due to a renewed interest in physical media from Gen Z.
“We feel Gen Z is leading the charge in the return to analog and retro media, because we feel they’re wanting an alternative to digital streaming services, the cloud,” Gubernachuk said.
“There is something really satisfying about having a physical media in an age where it seems like we have to question everything that is real,” Goertz added.
Joshua Wilson is also in the business of nostalgia, as he puts it. He runs Rae’s Rummage in Thirsty’s Flea Market on weekends.
“A long time I’ve been collecting tapes and I never thought it would get to something like this,” he said.
Wilson says some collect for the nostalgia, the cover imagery, or the obscurity.
“This is a funny one, I think it’s one of the biggest box office bombs ever,” he said, holding up a VHS tape of Cutthroat Island.
“It cost like $100 million to make and I think they made like $10 million off it. So it’s the hugest bomb. I like that having that, I like knowing people can fail.”
He says the resurgence is having an impact on the price of VHS.
“It’s a collection of ’80s anime called Cowboy Bebop, very hard to find,” he said, pointing to a VHS box set in his living room that he just sold.
“The last set sold with another box set for $2,000, somebody has one of these on eBay right now for $1,800.”
And it’s not the Disney classics people are looking for.
“People are really looking for the horror films, they’re looking for the sci-fi and B movies from the ’80s,” Wilson said. “The ’80s is kind of prime time for the weirdest things being made.”
Wilson hopes the interest is more than just a trend.
“I think owning physical media is so important, that we don’t lose things to time,” he said.
“I think it’s super cool that people are starting to collect them and archive them and (I hope) they keep that going.”
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