There was once a time when “straight-to-VHS” was a slur, code for largely terrible bargain bucket movies made for next to nothing yet sporting wildly-overpromising covers. Today, it’s not even a thing. VHS tapes were replaced by DVDs and eventually streaming. The last VCR player was made in 2016. Most machines lie broken, covered in dust or already long-since sent to scrap heaps. But one filmmaker is bringing “straight-to-VHS” back and hoping to give it a makeover for the digital era. “This...

‘I’m asking people to do a lot, but that’s what it means to be a human’: why one man made the first straight-to-video movie in 20 years Robert dos Santos decided to make his first film after being held at gunpoint once too often. The resulting drama, only available on VHS, is a broadside against AI: ‘Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value’ The new film This Is How the World Ends is a fine piece of work; the story of two siblings finding each other at a party held...

Finally there’s something that makes Netflix look weak, studios can’t touch, and leaves algorithms clueless: Independent film is turning distribution into the performance. Streaming spent a decade engineering friction out of viewing; this strategy puts it back. One night only, VHS or nothing, hours in line: Presence is the product. Dead Format, Live Audience Here’s one example: On June 7 (which was, improbably, National VCR Day), South African filmmaker Robert dos Santos released the VHS-only...