Aitor Lanuit, 52 years old, has had a ritual with his group of friends for 14 years. Every Wednesday they get together to watch a movie. The choice of the film is rotating, each person is assigned a day to choose it, and it is kept secret until the moment of pressing play. “There is no possibility of a veto,” Lanuit clarifies. Last week it was his turn. Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Shipwrecked,” a 1944 film that takes place on a lifeboat during World War II. The plot revolves around eight characters who are left adrift after a German submarine sinks their ship.
Unlike other works by the famous director, such as Vertigo and The Birds, Castaways is not on Netflix or Prime Video, or on any other streaming platform. “I can only find these movies at Video Instan,” the oldest video club in Spain and one of the last ones that remains open in the city of Barcelona.
According to data from the national association of wholesale businessmen in the video sector, in 2005 there were around 7,000 video stores in Spain. Currently, there are about 200 left. Their owners keep in touch through a WhatsApp group. Small bastions that have resisted the rise of piracy and the invasion of streaming platforms. Although its extinction has been announced for years, they retain a loyal audience that values ??the difference that the service offers them and is not yet in the digital age.
Jenaro Depares and Aurora Martínez founded Video Instan in 1980 under a motto: “Everything that is published in Spain is bought and nothing is sold, everything is saved.” This is how today the video club at 239 Viladomat Street houses one of the most complete film archives in the country. “We have a catalog of 48,000 films and many are not available on platforms or anywhere else,” explains Aurora Depares, daughter of the founders and current head of the business. “Sometimes, when they are going to do the Goya gala, they call me to ask for films that they don’t have in the archive.” She understood that preserving the cinematographic heritage that she had inherited from her parents was important not only for Barcelona, ??but for Spain. “I put all my effort and my little money into saving it.” In 2018, they managed to raise 50,000 euros to be able to move the premises, after they were kicked out of the location where they had been for more than 30 years.
Video club members pay a flat rate of 9.95 per month and can take as many movies as they want. “I go with my homework done,” says Aitor Lanuit. “I keep a list of the titles I want to see.” Bea and David, on the other hand, can spend an hour with their children in the store that expands its catalog week by week. What they value most is the family treatment they receive every time they go. “My children have a very special relationship with Aurora and the people at the video store,” explains Bea. When they became partners in 2019, they didn’t even have a DVD player, they had to buy one. “We like the ritual of going to choose a movie and letting our children get to know another type of cinema.” These spaces, according to Bea, are “small oases” in a big city like Barcelona. “They shouldn’t disappear.”
On Begur Street, 28, in the Sants neighborhood, Daniel Ventura manages a dry cleaning shop while, in the adjacent premises, he also manages the Marcha Net video club. Although it sounds incompatible, Ventura has managed to merge both names. He inherited the video store from his parents in 1994 and, by 2002, he already anticipated that the business would not be profitable for much longer. “The only thing that keeps me motivated to continue are my lifelong clients.” They knew how to adapt to the new business model.
Luis, 64, has been renting movies at Marcha Net for three decades and, since 2006, he has also been wearing their suits. “When the memory is so pleasant, it is difficult for us to abandon old habits.” In addition to renting titles every weekend, he keeps a collection of 3,000 movies in his house. “I’m lucky to have one of the last video stores in my area of ??influence, but I know that sooner or later they could all end up disappearing.”
“To all those who work in a video store, keep going, because you are part of a great tradition,” said filmmaker Quentin Tarantino in an interview on MTV. The director of Reservoir Dogs worked for five years at a movie rental store in Los Angeles. When it closed in 1997, Tarantino bought all the VHS tapes left in the store and placed them in his house as if it were a new personal branch. “By losing our cinematography, we are losing part of our historical heritage. We have to protect everything, we are not in a position to make value judgments.” The filmmaker spoke out on several occasions against Netflix and in favor of its analogue predecessors. “I’m amazed at how quickly the public has turned the page.”
Since its reopening on Viladomat Street, Video Instan’s motto has been: “It’s not just a video club.” As well as renting movies, it has a cafe and a small private cinema room that can be booked for sessions. The space is used to organize film matinees, colloquiums and festivals. “Once a month we show a film and we bring the actors or the director,” explains Aurora Depares. Two weeks ago they presented The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, together with its director, Patricia Font.
“They never didn’t have something they wanted to see,” says Mar, a Video Instan customer since 1998. The cinema experience, according to her, can only be lived in community. “They know me, they know my tastes and they offer me the unique opportunity to discuss films with their directors.”
For film buffs like Aitor Lanuit, who has already seen more than 640 titles with just his friends, the work that Aurora Depares does is very important. “It should be subsidized because culture is priceless and cinema is culture.”