Enter the eccentric world of record collectors in Alan Zweig's cult documentary VINYL, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary! Co-Presented with Canadian International Pictures + In-person Q&A with Director Alan Zweig and members of the crew!
This is a perfect documentary. A perfect record collector documentary. A perfect Canadian documentary (more specifically, Toronto!). Vinyl is Alan Zweig's first doc and he really knocked it out of the park by finding a very entertaining array of total record collector obsessives and his no-nonsense interview style where he gets to the crux of it with one anxious man you really feel for, another man who is terrifying, and a woman who describes her love of records with the feeling of entering a record store full of men. Zweig's mirror monologues don't dilly-dally either, this is a man who thinks too much and he has an elegant way of setting up these shots, framing record sleeves and ephemera around it. There are no cheezy documentary tropes going on here - a lot of docs use "big names" who only add annoyance, Vinyl's big names (Bruce LaBruce, Guy Maddin, Harvey Pekar) are all perfect and some even have a real rapport going with Zweig (Pekar really takes the piss here). Alan's asides of having to put his dog down (playing with mood by offering his dog a big slice of pizza until we figure out it's the last supper) or his mouse problem (showing a trap and repeating the instructions, "exit and die") work to the over-all whole. (Robert Dayton)