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Videoheaven

Directed by Alex Ross Perry
United States
2025
180 mins
Narrated by Maya Hawke, Alex Ross Perry’s (Her Smell, SFF 2019), Videoheaven is an enjoyably intellectual history of video stores, assembled from hundreds of film and TV clips.

A passion project 10 years in the making from Perry – an uncompromising independent filmmaker and ex-employee of fabled NYC video store Kim’s Video – Videoheaven charts the lifespan of video stores, from their beginnings in the late 1970s to their near-extinction in the 2010s. Inspired by Daniel Herbert’s 2014 book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, this rigorously researched essay film remixes a wide range of film and TV excerpts to craft a razor-sharp pop-cultural chronicle, featuring everything from Scream and Benny’s Video to Muriel’s Wedding and Seinfeld. An ode to a bygone era that deftly avoids the trappings of a nostalgia trip, it’s essential viewing for any card-carrying cinephile.

Limited seats are available for patrons requiring access for wheelchairs, low vision and hearing loop. Please contact our ticketing team directly on 1300 733 733 or tickets@sff.org.au to complete your booking.

“Absorbing, funny, rigorous. Videoheaven showcases Perry in big-picture film-critical mode, coolly elucidating the inception, expansion, corporatisation, and dissolution of the VHS (and DVD) rental era.”
Adam Nayman, Cinema Scope

Tickets

Fri 6 June 2025, 6:30pm
Dendy Newtown - Cinema 3
WheelchairAssisted Listening
Mon 9 June 2025, 3pm
Event George St - Cinema 9
WheelchairAssisted Listening
  • Program Strand
    International Documentaries
  • Year
    2025
  • Classification
    Unclassified 15+
  • Country
    USA
  • Language
    In English
  • Director
    Alex Ross Perry
  • Producer
    Andrew Adair, Jacob Perlin
  • Screenwriter
    Alex Ross Perry
  • Editor
    Clyde Folley
  • Genre
    Arts, Documentary, History, Film History
  • Premiere
    Australian Premiere
  • Company Credits
    Production Company: Cinema Conservancy
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Sydney Film Festival acknowledges Australia’s First Nations People as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land, and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose Country SFF is based.

We honour the storytelling and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia.

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