As part of its festival season, Chicago International Film Festival announced the Physical Media fair: a weekend event spanning Oct 17-18 dedicated to discussing and accruing physical media, which includes DVDs, CDs, books, and other formats separate from digital formats like streaming.
At the fair, an installation by the art collective Video Waste decorated the retail space. The Chicago-based brewery Revolution Brewing was present handing out free non-alcoholic and THC drinks for attendees. Throughout both days of the event, film trivia was asked by event staff then answered by attendees who won free film on DVD.
On Oct 17, the fair hosted the film distributor Kino Lorber for a live episode of their podcast Shelf Space which discusses physical media collecting with film directors, critics, and experts. The live episode was led by the podcast’s host Alicia Liu with special guest Joe Swanberg.
Swanberg is a film director of the 2016 film “Drinking Buddies” and segments of the “V/H/S”. Throughout the podcast’s interview, Swanberg discussed his interest in film that started when he was employed at a video store. Then, he started producing short films then feature-length films like his latest release “Sun Never Sets”.
Swanberg said from 2005 to 2018, he archived physical media like VHSs, DVDs, then BluRays for his collection of over 7,000 titles spanning all formats. His collection and memories of video stores inspired him to open a VHS rental store called “Terror Vision Records and Video”.
When asked about the origin of the concept “physical media”, Swanberg claims the concept came from the current obsession of 90’s nostalgia in contrast to digital streaming. He highlights how modernity means having the choices of the present mediums & formats while having past technology to rely on.
The second panel of the day was led by Festival programmer Nicola McCafferty with archivist Natalie Djordjevic and director Kevin Shaw.
They propose that cultural moments in the current media landscape have become less impactful, so movie watchers turn to collecting a library of physical media to retain and cherish the feeling of ephemeral: a partially captured fleeting moment in time.
In response to streaming, they show exhaustion over how often programs like HBO’s Westworld get pulled from streaming platforms. Physical media circumvents TV and film from being scrubbed off their services, yet programs like Westworld do not have complete physical releases.
They end the panel by introducing their favorite and most rare pieces of physical media they have collected so far: a bootleg DVD of John Waters’ TV appearances with a homemade sleeve, a fanmade copy of Twilight on VHS, and a signed copy of the second season of the L Word.
As the panel wrapped up, the venue took an hour-long break to prepare for the physical media swap: attendees were informed to bring DVDs to swap with one another with a limit of 10 items. Large collections ended up at tables as attendees would swap titles with one another to end the first day of the fair.
The second day, Oct 18, of the event centered a pop-up shop where independent distributors and resale shops would sell DVDs. The Chicago International Film Festival themselves had a store in the back corner with programming papers and merchandise of shirts, stickers, and scarves.
A crowd of people surrounded the Brown Elephant stand: a resale shop where all proceeds go to "LGBTQ+ healthcare and [funding] care for the uninsured and under-insured at Howard Brown Health”. Their stand had shelves of DVDs, a bin of posters, and a shelf of books as workers handed out free condoms to support their safe sex initiatives.
Kino Lorber showed up for the second day pop-up shop as well. They had a shelf unit for their DVDs under their usual national and international films, their Studio Classics collection of restored Hollywood classics, and Zeitgeist Films brand for “documentary, international, and independent cinema”.
Swanberg’s film distributor Terror Vision was selling their horror and generally oddball collection of movies. Their video rental stores can be found in Bucktown and Ravenswood.
Attendees leave the event with a recharged interest in collecting physical media. The fair also brought together a community centered around collecting physical media to interact with each other and build their libraries.
Although the formats are old and often forgotten about, the Physical Media Fair calls for people to recognize DVDs, VHSs, and other formats as physical manifestations of their appreciation for film.
Beyond the single weekend, the Chicago Film Festival seems to plan for the Physical Media Fair to be an annual event alongside their film festival season as they wrapped up their 2026 run and prepare for the following year.
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