Review "Jetzt auf Video"

 The book came with a lot of praise. Facebook-groups concentrating on the video-vhs-culture in Germany went mental about how good this book was. It was a crowdfunding effort and the original hardcover version was sold out in days if not hours. Thankfully the authors have decided to use the pdf.files for an amazon BOD which is available through amazon.de (link is below) for 45€ as softcover.

Nearly 400 A4 pages as softcover is a bit of a menace, but held expertly this works. First impression: The layout is decidedly 90ies like the cheaply made franchise magazines that the big video-chains would give away for free to customers. But it is clearly on the amateur side with no regards on ratios and working visuals. The writing is in 12p an a tad on the spacous side. There are a lot of pictures, sadly the rough paper is not able to reproduce the pictures sharply, this must have been one advantage of the hardcover-book.

The book was hailed as THE compendium for german/ic video culture from the 1970s to the early 2000s. And here it really does deliver. Let's set aside the nerdy "I was a teenage video freak" autobiographical anecdotes and some major glitches when it comes to presenting the most important videostores (obviously made in southern Germany the authors simply omit "Prussian" Cities like Cologne, Hamburg and even Berlin with "Videodrom" being not mentioned anywhere though being an institution people would travel to internationally).

But what do you get. A very expertly written account of how home-video emerged and the demise of Super 8 film. First-hand interviews with lots of the big players in the market and even their international ventures with the US-studios. The interviews are lengthy and sometimes become very specific, giving exactly the amount of insight a real nerd would like to get.

Porn and exploitation are given their appropriate space (as does censorship - again with astonishing insight) as is interior design, business models and connections to organized crime. 

There is even a lenghty feature on how video-cassette covers were created and how you can collect them today and some gialli get their share of the fame, some even explored in detail.

Set aside the slightly amateurish appearance and the bit of space-stealing this book is packed with information but could and should have been 100 pages shorter. But then, there will be enough people who will yell out: No! we need 50 pages of VHS-Covers and 20 pages of basic star information (on Chuck Norris...).

That the authors present their most liked vhs-only movies is granted.

Very worthwile and very, very nerdy, this book will be the root upon which future academics will publish their fancy "publications" in the future.

Nice.

Foreign readers might use the appropriate apps on their smartphones to directly translate the text to their screens like Google Translator.

AMAZON