Videotheek Marco

This screening is part of South Explorer, an annual event where cultural hotspots in Rotterdam South open their doors simultaneously for a weekend with various programs. The filmmaker is a guest for a Q&A.

Video stores played an indispensable role in many communities as places where absolutely everyone could rent a film. Now that they are slowly dying out, Rotterdam artist Gyz La Rivière tells the story of the handful of video stores that still remain in the Netherlands and the rest of the Benelux. In Videotheek Marco, artist Gyz La Rivière erects a monument to a vanished Rotterdam by means of the almost forgotten video stores. He focuses on Videotheek Marco, a small, now vanished business in the underground shopping centre at Beurs station. La Rivière shows himself again as an inquisitive researcher of the media history of the city. He discovers the smallest and most ephemeral video stores, but also the specialist shops that serve the various communities of Rotterdam. La Rivière also investigates other applications of VHS: from instructional tapes and karaoke videos to the development of alternative television through the possibilities of consumer technology. For La Rivière, video was the culture of and for the people and he pays tribute to that with bright colours and eccentric sounds.