What a Difference Video Difference Makes
In the summer of 2002, I returned to the city of Halifax after my first year of university in Sackville, New Brunswick. While pursuing studies in commerce, I realized a more urgent academic pursuit: the mysterious VHS (and burgeoning DVD) collection at the R.P. Bell Library.
For most of the first half of 2002, I burned off a lot of afternoons and evenings snapping up whatever I could that wasn’t in the English language. After a high-school job at the maligned Blockbuster Video, I considered myself pretty up-to-speed on popular cinema (adding “Martin Scorsese” and “John Carpenter” as authorized users on the accounts of friends, ha ha guys), but foreign film was a blind spot. In university, living next to a library and having free access to their catalogue meant vast swaths of time invested in exploring Fellini, Truffaut, Kieslowski, anything with Jeanne Moreau: effectively whatever wasn’t available at a suburban corporate video store.
During summer break, still living in the suburbs, I had a job in “downtown” Halifax. Problem: no decent video stores in the suburbs to satisfy my film-nerding. So, why not a Video Difference membership? Contrasted with Blockbuster, Video Difference rentals had an air of sophistication and mystery, their clear packaging enclosing some the box art of some continental obscurity or inscrutable political documentary. I knew I wanted to live in a city, and I knew I liked most of the foreign films I saw, and so this was a thing I resolved to do.
I trekked up to Quinpool Road one afternoon, took out a membership (always including coupons for free rentals, bless them), ascended to the third floor of the narrow building, and rented my first movie: Jean-Luc Godard’s BAND OF OUTSIDERS. No DVD of the film existed in North America, so my selection was a VHS tape in a garish green-and-yellow design, with Anna Karina looking anxious on the front cover. To glance at the artwork, you might infer this was a Gallic existential take on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
And that was it for me. I’d seen Godard’s BREATHLESS and enjoyed, but this kinetic and infinitely stylish film launched an obsession with Godard, Karina, French cinema and Video Difference itself. In spite of the terrific inconvenience of looping to the store and then back home on an hour-long bus ride after work, it was worth it just to wander around and make note of strange and wonderful discoveries. A new documentary on Jacques Derrida? Of course, third floor. An entire German mini-series on DVD, just as the TV-on-DVD format began to swamp the market? We’ll give you a call when it’s returned. Are we missing the short films of Jan Svankmajer? Just make note of it on our giant “Requests” board upstairs, we should have it in stock in a few weeks. We have entire walls devoted to AFI lists, BFI lists, the Criterion Collection, movies that played at the local film festival going back years, themed collections, essential-director selections: an entire living library that negated the need to consult an Internet database. We can curate it for you, wholesale.
When I moved back to Nova Scotia, ultimately only a few blocks from Video Difference, it became a social and cultural hub in my life. I made friends there, my then-girlfriend worked there, it was a place to idle around for an hour on a Friday night, trading recommendations. I worked at a music store, and a lot of the after-work discussions centered around film, and a lot of the hot tips from that chatter would feed right back to Video Difference. The always-wonderful staff were equally passionate about films, filmmaking, and expanding appreciation of the medium. This cycle of discovery felt liberating, as if we had our very own towering art gallery right up the street, an always-lit neon red wheel on the roof beckoning us for pilgrimage.
It was a 24-hour operation, and also one of the few places you could buy cigarettes after 10 p.m., so it was a minor pleasure to pick up some Du Mauriers at 2 a.m. and get into an excited appreciation of ALPHAVILLE with the guy behind the counter. Freeman’s, an equally venerable institution next door that traffics in pizza and beer to a largely student population, meant that you could meet friends for drinks, then pop out to rent whatever stupid comedy came to mind, or close the deal on your boozy insistence that “we gotta watch KOYAANISQATSI right now.” (Note: there are better midnight movies out there.) The basement floor was so jammed with older, lesser-known Hollywood films that patience was always rewarded.
Video Difference was also a critical piece of the formal film studies infrastructure in Halifax. Small as the discipline is in the city, professors directed (mostly) eager students to Video Difference to consume required viewing from around the world. Sections were set up specifically for film studies classes, enabling even the casual cineaste to get a crash-course in postcolonial African cinema or the Czech New Wave with a couple of bucks in their pocket.
More recently, renting Hitchcock boxsets and British murder mystery collections with my wife, the place seemed less-bustling on a weekend than it once was. They had the in-vogue binge-watch selections of recent years, like “Breaking Bad” — but why rent several pounds of physical discs when you can inhale the whole thing online, for the cost of one rental? Television production was increasing, and it consumed more and more leisure time. Conversations that once hinged on recent movie discoveries shifted to recent TV discoveries — and most of those shows were on streaming formats.
I noticed several weeks ago that Video Difference was no longer a 24-hour concern. And now it’s closing. This is sad for the cultural life of Halifax, as Video Difference was nothing less than a window on the world. It’s nowhere near the first of the high-profile closures of its kind in recent months and years, and it won’t be the last. Everyone had a sense this was coming, and it restricts the sense of wonder and discovery inherent in film.
Particularly in Canada, we remain at a big disadvantage for streaming content. Netflix is reducing its film selections in favour of television and original programming. New services like FilmStruck, which promise some degree of exposure to classic and essential films, remain unavailable to Canadians. Our cultural vocabulary is limited by algorithms and legal agreements. When places like Video Difference close, an expansive and highly democratic resource is lost.
The store will end rentals on August 15th, and will proceed to sell off its massive stock into the month of September. There is hope that some of the titles will end up in the public library system, but the majority is likely to land in private collections — there’s simply too much physical content. For those without the cash or physical space, these discoveries will be lost.
That VHS copy of BAND OF OUTSIDERS was sold off long ago in the first purge, when the store’s remaining stock of tapes was liquidated. For years, I’ve wondered whether my rental history going back to 2002 was preserved in the system (spoiler: probably not), as I consider it a document of a time in my life. I will be sad to see the spinning red neon wheel blink out.
