While the world is moving more towards streaming services than ever, the amount of specialist physical labels has increased. Focusing on niche tastes, they have become a haven for cult and genre favourites, forgotten, obscure, and downright odd movies.
Director Ryan Levey has assembled a collection of talking heads from the video industry, such as Severin’s David Gregory, Vinegar Syndrome’s Oscar Becher, and Something Weird’s Lisa Petrucci, as well as filmmakers/fans like Chris Alexander (Blood for Irina, former Fangoria editor) and critic Samm Deighan. Each of them raves about the wealth of titles that would have likely been lost to time without the wonderful work done by cult movie distributors. From the early days of Criterion’s laserdisc releases to the eclectic catalogues of the growing array of labels that are springing up worldwide, the documentary celebrates the strange, the obscure, and the downright bad – everything we love about cinema outside the mainstream.
In a time when every charity shop and car boot sale is heaving with mainstream titles people don’t want, it’s refreshing to see some companies prepared to go out on a limb to release titles with a limited but rabid appeal. Levey’s documentary gives those good folk a welcome round of applause from all us.
BOUTIQUE: TO PRESERVE AND COLLECT screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.
