Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! screens at Vancity Theatre as part of Rewind: The Videomatica Weekend. Image: submitted.
We covered Videomatica’s closing in May, but there’s more news. Rarely has a retail spot gone out in such style. The video store—a Kits institution—spent 28 years catering to the fancies of Vancouver’s most discerning film buffs, who came questing over elusive foreign titles and under-appreciated classics. In special recognition of Videomatica’s Big Kahuna status in the local movie scene, Vancity Theatre will host ‘Rewind: The Videomatica Weekend,’ August 19-21.
The result is nine movies presented by nine celebrated guest presenters and the premiere of Support Your Local Video Store, the web series produced by sketch comedy troupe Red Wheelbarrow that depicts the dying days of a video store. Film highlights include The Big Lebowski and cult hit Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, plus The Third Man starring Orson Welles
Videomatica co-founder Graham Peat expects this to be the first of three closing celebrations. He still can’t specify when Videomatica will shut its doors because the final destination of the shop’s collection has yet to be determined.
GET TICKETS
Rewind: The Videomatica Weekend, August 19-21, Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St., Viff.org
More details below:
The Vancouver Courier, August 17
Videomatica co-founder Graham Peat has never heard of a video shop securing its own weekend of programming at a movie theatre before.
Videomatica staff compiled a list of 50 possible films for Rewind, then whittled it down and chose those that haven’t recently screened in Vancouver and deserve to be viewed on a large screen and are hard to find.
“Things like Faster, Pussycat! and Latcho Drom are very hard to get and we did manage to bring them in from other countries,” Peat said.
He recommends seeing the 1949 suspense The Third Man, starring Orson Welles.
“It’s such a timeless spy thriller and more,” he said. “If they get nothing else out of it than the wonderful theme song, that would be great.”
Another indulgence, he says, will be the screening of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, which will be introduced by Bard on the Beach’s artistic director Christopher Gaze alongside Jay Brazeau, who appears in the comedy that was shot in Metro Vancouver.
Moviegoers will be able to satiate their senses with Baraka and Latcho Drom, but Peat suggests Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! would have been even more compelling if it had gone further. “A movie that should have been in 3-D, some say,” Peat quipped.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! will be presented by punk rock journalist and Evaporators frontman Nardwuar the Human Serviette.
Other Rewind films on tap include The Long Good Friday, The Big Lebowski, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Withnail and I, which will be followed by a panel discussion with Peat and Videomatica co-founder Brian Bosworth, hosted by film critic Katherine Monk.
Last modified: August 23, 2011
