Donnie Del Plato has an entire wall of VHS tapes in her apartment, sorted and stacked from floor-to-ceiling in a kaleidoscope of cardboard sleeves. She’s lost count of exactly how many she’s amassed, but the number has crested 1,000, plus a few bulky CRT TVs.
Del Plato’s collection started three years ago with two curios: “Jurassic Park” and “A Clockwork Orange.” When the illustrator moved to Rochester from New York City, she found herself with an empty spare room and thought it might be nice to fill the room with tapes. Fast-forward three years and Del Plato now describes her penchant for purchasing tapes as a “sickness.” Favorites include a For Your Consideration copy of “Mission: Impossible 3” and the bizarre cult-classic “Nowhere” from filmmaker Gregg Anaki.
“Mostly everything right now is still in that room,” Del Plato said, “but it’s spread to other areas of my apartment. It’s just growing. It’s like mold, spreading everywhere.”
VHS tapes are popping up more and more at secondhand markets, sitting alongside racks of vintage tees and crates of well-loved vinyl records, which themselves have clawed out of their own mass media grave within the last 20 years.
In 2024, the movie “Alien: Romulus” received a special edition release on VHS, and in the last year, film distributor Lionsgate FIlms re-released a handful of older movies on VHS, including “American Psycho,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Leprechaun.” On October 4, the Little Theatre is hosting a screening of “Troll 2” on VHS, plucked from Del Plato’s stash.
This resurgence of outdated tech is part nostalgia trip, part anti-digital consumerist revolution. The ability to hold something, to collect it, display it and consume it whenever you want — that has intrinsic value. While the modern streaming-centric entertainment ecosystem has its conveniences, it’s simultaneously chipping away at the most basic concept of consumerism: ownership.
Scott Pukos, director of communications at the Little Theatre, keeps a collection of physical movies in disc form. Some of his favorites include Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy (“Sunrise,” “Sunset” and “Midnight”), 2013’s “Coherence,” and an hour-long PBS special titled “Lords of the Gourd” about people who grow giant pumpkins. His dad is featured on the cover.
“Any movie that is very near and dear to me, I want to own it, I want that in my collection,” said Pukos. “With streaming, a movie could be gone at any time. Even if you buy something, you don’t actually own it.”
In the murky seas of digital distribution rights, the film and TV industry is batted about by the ever-changing currents of mergers, acquisitions and million-dollar deals between studios, streaming companies and media empires. Consumers are left to sift through the flotsam, never knowing when favorite films could be swept away, never knowing when or where or if it might wash up on our shores again.
“People just want some autonomy back, right?” said Del Plato. “Because, sure, you throw 20 bucks to Bezos and he says, ‘You now own the movie.’ But you don’t. It can disappear at any time. I think people being able to hold a physical thing that they can put in a DVD player, Blu-ray, whatever, is meaningful, especially if they spend money on it. Because then they have something tangible.”
As Del Plato’s collection swells, it’s evolving from its roots as an aesthetic display into something approaching the definition of a museum. These tapes, after all, are works of art — both the colorful covers and the actual movies and shows recorded on reels of tape within. Keeping a collection is a means of keeping a cultural record. Her Instagram account, @donnies_video, has just shy of 20,000 followers.
Del Plato herself doesn’t frequently pull from her VHS collection for viewing, and she doesn’t unwrap any of the tapes that are still sealed. But a few times a year she’ll host movie nights with friends.
“We’ll go through like three tapes a night sometimes, which is really fun,” she said, whether they’re busting out some absolute classics or little-known absurdities.
An eclectic library of physical media lives at the Visual Studies Workshop in downtown Rochester, ranging from 35mm film reels of rare and classic movies to early VHS predecessors, some of which contain Rochester’s earliest public access TV shows and videos captured by citizen journalists in the ‘70s.
Nilson Carroll, curator and preservation specialist at VSW, noted that the expected shelf life of most analog tapes is about 30 years, but their lifespans can stretch much longer, especially when treated properly.
“There is something extremely reliable about these tapes,” Carroll said, standing amidst shelves and shelves of tapes and reels in a climate-controlled room. “Even the oldest ones, the ones from the ‘70s, you can still play them and they’re perfect. It really speaks to the reliability of analog media.”
VSW’s executive director Jessica Johnston insists that physical media is more reliable for storage than solid, digital hard drives. After they digitize old tapes at VSW, the final step in the preservation process is to back them up on magnetic LTO tape. For home collectors, Carroll’s recommendation for safe storage is to avoid basements and attics.
“What your tapes want is how your living room is,” he said.
There’s something about the effort of physical media that makes it more valuable, too. When it requires a bit of physical labor beyond clicks or button presses, the art itself demands greater focus and attention. Mary Lewandowski, collections manager at VSW and film projectionist, relishes that extra bit of work.
“I’m a pretty anti-convenience person in general, really pro-effort,” she said. “I think that’s becoming more popular. I think that’s the revolution. I don’t have to do it fast. I think a lot of people are realizing when you have such easy access to so many things that you can just click whatever, it devalues everything.”
Kellen Beck is a Rochester-based writer who has covered science, tech and entertainment since joining Fairport High School’s newspaper “The Lampion” in 2010, among other publications. Email him at kellentbeck@gmail.com.
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