FROM APRIL/MAY 2024 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

Every month for the past 16 years, Daniel Hanna has paid his rent, hydro bills and his supplier, then held his breath till the next month.

Hanna is the owner and founder of Eyesore Cinema, one of Toronto’s last video rental stores.

“Every time I think this is it – nope. There’s enough money,” Hanna says with a laugh. “I couldn’t do this if I was a capitalist. People ask me why I do it, and I say, ‘Because it needs to be done.’ I don’t want to live in a world without video stores.”

Rows of cult classics and more familiar titles are organized by genre under tags written in black Sharpie atop dividers that separate each section of the store. A large framed Hollywood Cop poster hangs on the beige wall behind the front desk; there’s Janet Leigh’s iconic shriek in Hitchcock’s Psycho in a frame near the entrance to the back screening room. It’s clear after taking a step into Eyesore Cinema that this is a place for film lovers.

Hannah first opened the shop in 2008, above the iconic Queen Street record store Rotate This! In 2016 he moved the shop to its current home, just west of Bloor and Dufferin.

That 2008 opening coincided with a massive cultural shift toward digital forms of entertainment and led to interesting and occasionally rocky encounters.

“Sometimes I’d get these guys that would come in and ask, ‘Where are the Blu-rays?’ And I’d say, ‘We don’t rent Blu-rays.’”

“You don’t rent Blu-rays?” they’d reply. “You’re going to be out of business in a year.”

“I wish I had his phone number,” Hanna says. “Hey, it’s been 16 years, buddy.”

According to Statistics Canada, 28.1 million Canadians used video streaming services in 2023, with Netflix being the service of choice, signalling the tide turning toward what’s been called the death of physical media.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with streaming,” Hanna says. “When does it go full circle and anything you enjoyed about it at the beginning is gone? Oh, it was cheap. It was easy, and they had all the movies, but now it’s twice the price with commercials and the selection sucks.”

It’s a turn that Hanna says has already begun as streaming services hike up prices and take away content, to the dismay of users.

“It’s interesting now, after a decade or more of streaming, that people are coming back – teenagers and people in their 20s saying, ‘Wow, a real video store – my dad told me about this.’ And the next week they come back with five of their friends.”

In an age when the streaming market is a $ 700-billion global juggernaut, the fight can seem like a futile duel against an all-consuming hydra. But there’s magic that happens when you’re browsing here that Netflix hasn’t replicated.

Andrew Behan discovered Eyesore Cinema through a sewing class in which a conversation about film led their teacher to recommend the store.

Behan and their partner, Michael, now organize Film School Confidential, one of the weekly screenings at the store. On the day we meet at Eyesore, the film of choice is Akira Kurosawa’s epic Seven Samurai.

“For Michael, putting on the screenings is really fulfilling. He does them for free because he chooses movies that he wants people to see,” Behan says. “There’s maybe a hope that, by showing people a broad array of experiences through film, it will make the world a better place.”

In the crowd is Bridget Dilauro, a regular who for six years has travelled weekly from Brampton to attend the event.

“They do amazing screenings. You get to meet people that share the same interests as you,” she says. She also credits Hanna for creating a locus for like-minded film buffs: “He puts a lot of heart and soul into this to make it a space where people can hang out and talk about movies and life.”

Dilauro stresses the importance of supporting local spaces like Eyesore, whether it’s renting a DVD for $3.50 or just showing up for one of its screenings. As she sees it, every action counts.

“We don’t need to give Amazon more money,” she says. “Amazon doesn’t create a community space like this.”