High Hopes for Video: The UK Independent Film and Video Sector's Engagement with the Videocassette

When VHS technology took off in the late 1970s/early 1980s, it triggered widespread hopes in the UK that it would provide the means to deliver non-mainstream moving image work – artists’ film and video, documentary work, political activism, as well as domestic and European feature films – to wider audiences. Correspondence from the Greater London Council, the Arts Council and distributors, as well as press releases, magazine articles and contracts document various initiatives that sprung up amid those hopes in order to enable audiences to access a wider range of moving image work – via the shelves of public libraries and the newly instigated video access libraries, as well as in their own homes through rental and sell-through ventures. This article uses this archive material – available via the Film & Video Distribution Database (http://fv-distribution-database.ac.uk) – to explore the range of these initiatives (especially the library schemes), together with the enthusiasm and concerns to which they gave rise and how these parallel more contemporary initiatives in the digital realm.