EAGLE ROCK, Calif. — When Vidiots video opened in 1985, the women-helmed founders had a vision to provide Los Angeles’ cinephile community with a curated collection of videos at a time well before online streaming, and a time when VHS and Beta formats were still battling it out. 

After a successful run as an indispensable content hub for movie geeks, filmmakers, and artists, Vidiots closed their brick and mortar location in Santa Monica in 2017 due to rising rent and the lure of the Internet.

Now, the Vidiots team is planning a comeback at the historic Eagle Theater (and adjacent spaces) along Eagle Rock Boulevard. Executive Director Maggie Mackay said the new incarnation is kind of a full circle for Vidiots.

“My favorite thing that I love to hear is that someone grew up on the east side of L.A., they went to the Eagle as a little kid, then they went to UCLA, they got their film education at Vidiots, and now they've migrated back to the east side as so many creatives have in LA. The coming together of the Eagle and Vidiots is this emotional explosion,” said Mackay.

For co-founder Patty Polinger, Vidiots was an opportunity to leave the corporate world and help foster a community of film lovers in L.A., which at the time were starving for quality content. In addition to more mainstream fare, Vidiots carried foreign, cult, experimental, and art films before such things were easily found on the Internet.

“We thought, there's no place in L.A. like this,” said Polinger. “And this is the center of film right here, so, we just thought there was sort of a need.”

As streaming services gained popularity and rent continued to rise, keeping the doors open became a challenge for Vidiots.

“It was getting harder and harder to keep it going and the film community was sort of moving east and it was becoming less of a great location,” said co-founder Cathy Tauber.

Vidiots has found a new home, taking over a swath of Eagle Rock Boulevard that will include a newly renovated Eagle Theatre as well as supporting spaces and services for film-lovers and filmmakers. 

The Eagle Theater, which started as The Yosemite (a vaudeville house), dates back to 1929. Over the years, it changed hands several times, most recently being rented as a pop-up church.

Renovation has already begun on the new Vidiots, which will be a hub not only for renting and screening movies, but also for education, food and drink, and community building.

“[The Eagle] served generations of people,” said Mackay. “We had a woman who reached out who told us she saw her first movie here in like 1944!”

Mackay said movies were made for the communal experience and at a time when sitting in a darkened theater is not possible, she said many have been commenting on Vidiots’ social media platforms with great anticipation for a return to an in-person film community meeting place.

When they open the doors to the new space (slated for some time in 2021) Mackay said, “I will be reminded of why I got into this crazy thing in the first place.”