VHS-only indie – South African filmmaker Robert dos Santos released a VHS-only movie on June 7—complete with vinyl soundtrack plans—to make the format part of the message. Elsewhere, Criterion’s mobile closet turned queues into a movie pilgrimage at Portland Art Museum’s PAM C
The line was already forming before the day even really started—around 5 AM—long before the truck opened its doors. And when the Criterion Mobile Closet finally arrived at 11 AM across from the Portland Art Museum, it didn’t feel like a retail stop or a publicity stunt. It felt like a pilgrimage.
That same spirit of putting the audience in the room—insisting that the “how” matters as much as the “what”—is showing up in a different form just across the globe. On June 7. South African filmmaker Robert dos Santos released the VHS-only film “This Is How the World Ends. ” an anti-AI parable about two siblings finding each other as humanity faces an ending brought on by artificial intelligence.
He didn’t frame it as a gimmick. “The message that goes out through the film is the message we’re putting into the way we’re releasing it,” dos Santos said.
The choice comes with real trade-offs. VHS brings image quality degradation and frame crops, even though the film was shot in high definition on an ARRI Alexa—an imaging setup that, as the project’s own premise reminds viewers, didn’t exist when VHS manufacturing ceased in 2006.
Even with those limitations, dos Santos says VHS preorders are coming from all over the world. Two pressings have sold out, and he’s talking with VHS Haven in the US to help with fulfillment. One buyer in Malta wants two tapes and an album, but postage would be $160.
The budget impact is not incidental. Dos Santos estimates that VHS sales alone will cover 15%-20% of the film’s budget. The plan for distribution also flips the usual sequence: VHS first. followed by DVD and Blu-Ray. with theatrical release to follow—while streaming takes the old VHS spot at the back of the line.
“The people pre-ordering really, really care about film,” dos Santos said. “If you don’t care about film, you’re not going to buy a VHS in the first place. Cinema would be the next rung of the ladder.”
In Portland, the line didn’t exist because people were forced into it. It existed because people wanted to be there. At Cinema Unbound—part of the Portland Art Museum’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow fundraiser. known as PAM CUT—the Criterion Mobile Closet drew hundreds of Portlanders out early on a Saturday morning. As the day stretched forward. the crowd included filmmakers. cinephiles. young people and not-young people. and at least one man who owned over 4. 000 DVDs. There were also people in the line who didn’t have a player yet.
No one in that early queue, at least among the people the reporter spoke with, came off as annoyed. The line itself seemed to be the point: a shared waiting room where the anticipation was part of the experience.
Criterion president Peter Becker spent the day working the line—answering questions. encouraging people to connect. and keeping the conversation anchored in movies. He talked about the European. Japanese. Mexican. and Hong Kong cinema that shaped him. why it matters. and how much it meant to him that everyone was there. Then he moved to the next section and did it again. It didn’t play like marketing. It played like a pastoral act.
Criterion is now exploring whether that kind of physical presence can show up at events tied to food. music. travel. and fashion. The shift makes sense in the logic the day offered: the audience for this isn’t limited to Criterion fans. It’s anyone who wants to be inside something that means something.
PAM CUT’s momentum didn’t stop with the closet, either. The weekend also included three films programmed at the Tomorrow Theater. a single-screen venue that used to be a sex club and has since been transformed into a place built for concentrated. one-night programming. Every screening and event there is described as a one-night stand.
The Tomorrow Theater’s schedule centers on rep house selections paired with book clubs, knitting societies, drinking games, or creative collective collaborations. There are filmmaker Q&As, custom-built smell-o-visions, and live scores. The upcoming smell-o-visions include “Parasite.”
The per-screen average is described as among the highest in the country. and the vision belongs to PAM CUT director Amy Dotson. Dotson cut her teeth at IFP and was once Harvey Weinstein’s assistant. She oversaw Cinema Unbound as well, a fundraiser that the piece describes as sharing no DNA with a rubber-chicken circuit.
Cinema Unbound’s honorees spanned James Beard-nominated chefs who catered an extraordinary Indonesian dinner, along with comedian Maria Bamford. Each table had themed objects aligned with the honorees. and the atmosphere leaned cheap. cheerful. and interactive—from clappy hands to pom-poms and friendship bracelets.
When the fundraising portion arrived, Dotson opened by asking who could give $25,000; four people could. She moved through denominations with the energy of someone who believed the room would respond. By the time she identified dozens of people who could pledge $150, the museum ballroom felt like a rally. PAM CUT had raised over $250,000.
If the through-line across both stories feels human. it’s because the stakes are about what happens to people when technology is optimized away from experience. The idea is framed directly through the tension between format and meaning: shifting from content to experience is presented as a hedge against AI. but it’s also described as fragile—easy to duplicate. easy to dilute. easy to turn into “technique rather than expression.”.
That’s why VHS works here as more than a collectible. Dos Santos chose it because his film is about what gets lost when human imperfection is optimized away; separate the format and the argument, the piece says, and you end up with a gimmick.
It’s also why Becker’s presence matters. When he’s talking to people who have been waiting for six hours, the emphasis isn’t on performance for a brand. The line forms because people can “tell the difference”—because they believe certain films matter and that people deserve access to them.
Dotson’s Tomorrow Theater logic runs on the same principle: the screenings are one night only. By conventional business calculation, that’s bad, the piece notes. By her calculation, it’s the only one that makes sense.
All of this connects to a longer story about independent film’s original claim on culture: answering to the work rather than to the market. The piece then points to Miramax’s move to make authenticity valuable. the awards machinery that followed. and a minor-league version of the studio system. While Criterion looks to extend the truck’s reach and Dotson has considered whether the Tomorrow concept could apply elsewhere. the piece insists success doesn’t tie to scale.
The model is described as binary: “You mean it or you don’t.” Audiences—especially those who show up for this kind of thing—know quickly which it is.
The piece also links that same relationship-building to YouTube-developed filmmakers, describing them as building creative authority with specific communities by showing up publicly and earning trust over years. That relationship, it warns, fails when it gets treated like a pipeline.
The larger conclusion is blunt: none of these tactics “save” independent film from the structural pressures it faces. But the examples point away from the mentality that indie survives by competing on studio terms.
Under all of it sits a conviction with a simple heartbeat: film is worth showing up for. Filled rooms, the piece argues, are where independent film has always been most itself.
VHS only independent film Robert dos Santos This Is How the World Ends National VCR Day Criterion Mobile Closet Peter Becker Portland Art Museum PAM CUT Cinema Unbound Tomorrow Theater Amy Dotson smell-o-visions Parasite