The Bootleg Video Vans of the Soviet Union | Hacker News Reader

The Bootleg Video Vans of the Soviet Union

theatlantic.com

59 pointsvaleg11 comments

There was also oral tradition of reciting the films. Typically one lucky kid who've seen the movie would be the playground hero reciting it to others over and over again: often with some added cool detail that wasn't there.

I got familiar with The Fly and Terminator that way years before watching them firsthand.

My experience is less extreme than that, but I became familiar with the Star Wars saga by reading the story in a weekly magazine which ran a few pages every week; it had still photos from the movies.

This was West of the Iron Curtain (Finland) but we had no movie theatres nearby.

It's odd, I suppose, but as a kid who grew up in America immersed in Hollywood movies ... we also recited movies to each other.

I'm in my 50s and have a friend who has uncles and cousins in the Colombo family of the Mafia. We would crack each other up at work by saying lines from The Godfather during boring meetings.

Citing lines from movies is perhaps a bit different. Well-known movies have for decades been a part of building culture (national and international).

For instance, I notice I regularly reference a pacifist war movie (from 1955, with two re-makes) that everyone here has seen (and most have read the novel the movies are based on), and at least most men know the dialogue well enough to understand the reference. Perhaps it's part of building cohesion: a reference to history that is shared by all.

You made me remember this kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLix4QPL3tY

Seems like exactly what you describe. Must have been fun.

It was exactly like that! Down to calling protagonists with their actors' real names.

There was a period after the collapse of the USSR when there were a lot of private TV channels being set up, which would just show latest Hollywood bootlegs. Some movies which were still in theaters in the US would be shown on TV. That, and random soft porn after children's bed time.

When interested in the whole east bloc bootleg culture topic, don't miss out on the 2105 documentary film Chuck Norris vs. Communism who covers the organized structures of 80s Communist Romania.

https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/18/5422606/communist-romania...

Highly recommended! Watched it on Netflix a few years ago and teared up several times.

The picture in the article shows a small minivan. But a lot of them were actual huge tourist busses "converted" to mobile movie theaters. 100's of huge busses all over the country showing "Terminator", "Rambo First blood" etc."Converted" as in they used already built in bus TV's to show movies , some had larger screens though.

Up until late 1990's there were huge open air bootleg markets in Moscow. All of the newest American movies were available there on VHS often the day of the release (or even before the official release in USA! directors cut/pre-view copies were illegally sold by Hollywood insiders to the video pirates for undisclosed amounts of money on the black market). One could buy any newest VHS or CD release for $1. Any computer software - Windows, Mac, Office - anything was available for pennies. All latest stuff illegally pirated/imported straight from California tech hub. A lot of Americans/foreigners loaded up on pirated movies, software and music there every weekend. $20 would get you a dosen latest release movies and a bunch of newest CD's. That was the golden age of piracy.

some fun photos from back then:

https://pastvu.com/_p/d/b/c/k/bckpfvzzrnr6ciixto.jpg

https://pastvu.com/_p/a/1/5/9/15910ecqs8boyjgao4.jpg

https://pastvu.com/_p/a/4/d/1/4d1zuxoht8euiaykam.jpg

http://osapple.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/37fc6281ac3683c...

https://pastvu.com/_p/a/6/7/1/6715b7f1f96c3456f3e5dacf1bdc8f...

https://www.calvertjournal.com/images/uploads/embeddable_sli...

http://visualrian.ru/images/old_preview/54/28/542840_preview...

http://leonpar.narod.ru/2.jpg

http://movie-club.ru/pictures/f8/gorbushka/gorbushka_006.jpg

I grew up in the US in the middle of nowhere but within the shadow of a larger town. There was a small flea market that had a few stalls that carried stuff like this, but nothing on this scale.

Everything old is new again - I look at these pictures and I think of how big private BitTorrent trackers are with their curation, discovery, and exchange of materials. If you factor in the blank discs used for burning things, it works out to about $1 to turn a set of FLACs into a CD with a cue sheet, so the economics are the same even though the distribution is all online now.

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