When Friday Nights Meant Walking Two Miles for a Movie
A nostalgic look back at Friday nights in the videoteka era—when VHS tapes, hidden gems, and a local film mentor were our version of Netflix.
When Friday Nights Meant Walking Two Miles for a Movie
It’s Friday night. The weekend is ahead of me. I make a sandwich, grab a drink, and get ready to put on a movie. Bliss! The choice is endless: 20 movie channels, plus Netflix, plus HBO on demand. Pure madness!
Forty minutes later—sandwich gone, drink finished—I’m still scrolling, trying to decide what to watch. Either I’ve already seen everything 30 times, or the titles in front of me don’t spark enough interest to hit play. At that point, I usually give up. What I really need is a recommendation—someone who’s seen a film and loved it, or at least a review convincing me it’s worth my time. Without that? Off to bed.
And then nostalgia hits. Not too long ago—okay, maybe 30 or so years, which suddenly does feel like long ago—things were different. Back then, TV meant just two channels, and instead of Netflix we had video rental stores.
In my hometown of Struga, we had one called Emi Videostore, tucked away on Goce Delchev street. Every Friday afternoon you were sent there to pick 2–3 movies for the weekend—and you’d better not come back with a bad selection. You flipped through the catalog to see what was new, or checked the counter for tapes someone had just returned. If you were lucky, the latest hit still had a copy left. If not—tough luck.
You walked home with two VHS tapes (the worst video format ever invented) while the family waited eagerly. Picture quality? Nowhere near HD. Sometimes the movie was a shaky bootleg from a cinema, complete with audience laughter like a sitcom track. But no one complained. In fact, it was a bonus if your neighbor didn’t have a VCR—because that meant movie night at your place.
But Emi Videoteka was more than just a store to me. It was where I received my greatest informal film education. All thanks to the man behind the counter: Dimitrie Duracoski—Dimche Durac.
Everyone in Struga knew him. A writer, a painter, an artistic soul. You didn’t just rent movies from Dimche—you got advice, insight, and sometimes even a secret recommendation. From under the counter, he’d slip you a VHS with something special—not for everyone, only if he sensed you were ready for more than a Schwarzenegger blockbuster.
One day, while trying to impress him with my “film knowledge,” Dimche pulled out a tape and said:
“Watch this, and then we’ll talk…”
1986 / 120m
Betty Blue
The film was Betty Blue (37°2 le matin) —a French drama with unforgettable music. That moment changed everything. Soon after, I discovered Kieślowski, Polanski, Almodóvar, Scorsese. I learned about film aesthetic, cinematography, film music, framing. Every time I returned a VHS, I got a mini-lecture and walked away richer with new knowledge.
That’s how my informal film education began. Emi Videostore was my Netflix—only better. Netflix and film school in one. And to this day, whenever I sit with Dimche, who remains one of Struga’s strongest supporters of culture, I still feel the same joy talking about movies.