What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 7pm Tuesday 8am - 7pm Wednesday 8am - 7pm Thursday 8am - 7pm Friday 8am - 9pm Saturday 8am - 7pm Sunday 8am - 7pm

Best Video Film & Cultural Center

Home
United States
Hamden, CT
Best Video Film & Cultural Center

Best Video Film & Cultural Center was created to preserve Best Video’s rich archive and explore new w Movie fans may still rent films on a movie-by-movie basis.

Best Video Film and Cultural Center (BVFCC) was created to preserve Best Video’s rich archive and explore new ways to bring people, film, and music together. BVFCC now runs this valued community space serving Greater New Haven with its world-class film archive, performance space, and cafe. The vast film archive remains in place and continues to grow. In addition, our music events, film screenings,

and other presentations in the performance space are expanding to reach a broader community audience. Music, film, and literary events occur most days of the week. In addition, Best Video Film & Cultural Center has made its performance area available for community forums, school poetry readings, and other community events. But BVFCC now also offers subscription memberships—payable on a monthly or annual basis—that offer incredibly affordable options to access the world of cinema. Our cafe is open 8 AM-5 PM daily (later on days when we have an event). Our video archive is open 11 AM-7 PM Monday-Wednesday, 11AM - 9PM Thursday-Saturday, and 12PM - 5PM on Sunday. For our indoor events, we strongly recommend wearing masks. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Best Video Film & Cultural Center may accept tax-deductible donations to support our archive and programming.

09/05/2026

THIS *** SUNDAY *** AFTERNOON !!!

Best Video Film & Cultural Center presents a triple bill matinee show this Sun., Sept. 6 with two acts from Brooklyn, NY—Sotto Voce and Cousin Oven—and Connecticut's Calendula. The cover is $10 and the show starts at 4 PM.

Sotto Voce has been the moniker for Pittsburgh native Ryan Gabos's homespun musical project since 2011. Recording nearly every note in whatever small space he calls his bedroom at any given time, he catalogues his personal brand of songcraft built on the result of his influences, including Jim O'Rourke, The Sea and Cake, Deerhoof, and Joan of Arc. Sotto Voce operates live as a band with bassist Justin Gonzales and drummer Ryan Hopper. Of latest album—2026's The Sound of Trying—Pop Matters says it "suggests a sort of Todd Rundgren in Brooklyn vibe, marrying the lo-fi, DIY aesthetics of bedroom pop with a musical mind that never seems to run out of good ideas."

Cousin Oven is the Brooklyn-based rock band led by frontman, Owen Bologna. A master of personification, Owen skillfully weaves emotional honesty, clever prose, and rhythmic drive into a consistently beautiful musical product. Cousin Oven songs are sweet and subtle, rewarding you for the attention you pay to them with genuine warmth.

Calendula is the musical project of Abigail Golec, a singer-songwriter based in Stafford Springs, Connecticut. Their nostalgia for past homes, daydreamed futures, and yearning for loved-ones fuels their folk-inspired melodies. Their self-titled album releases on June 21st, 2026.

09/03/2026

Q***r Film Club is back at Best Video tonight for a screening @ 7pm. Doors open at 6:30pm and admission is $5!
See you there!!

09/02/2026

Raizine Bruton didn’t grow up going to the movies. Instead, at around five years old, she started watching old black-and-white movies with her stepdad on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), much to the amusement of her siblings.

08/31/2026

Come out on tomorrow, Sept 1 at 6:30pm for a screening of Anatomy of a Murder presented by Jazz Haven. Suggested donation of $5-$10.
There will be refreshments available for purchase at the Cafe.

08/29/2026

SATURDAY NIGHT TRIPLE BILL !

Best Video Film & Cultural Center features the triple bill of Mother Juniper, Nathan El (Pittsburgh, PA), and Offering Field this Sat., Aug. 29. The show starts at 7 PM and the cover is $10.

Mother Juniper is made up of dream story weavers, many myths, and a three stringed street banjo.

Nathan El is the experimental folk project of Pittsburgh-based agriculturalist and musician Nathan Blake. The project seeks to stretch traditional folk forms into unfamiliar shapes and marry sleepy folk with ambient, distorted textures. Live, Nathan El is often supported by Claire Sweeney (fiddle, harmonium, backing vocals), Austin Orth (guitar, keys, backing vocals), Brian Spragg (drums), and Carson Mara (bass).

Nathan El has independently toured the East Coast, received airplay on NPR, and opened for internationally touring acts. The project’s most exemplary release to date, reworkings of the traditional songs Jubilee and Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, arrives Friday, May 29.

New Haven’s Offering Field—Adam Parker's stage name—steps out of the studio and into the midwinter dusk with a gift: a new album of mystic songwriting crisp as frost on the fallen leaves. Hand Reaching Through Flames, his first album in seven years, is the most intimate work Parker has released, having both the immediacy of small club performance and the uncanny quality of a voice picked up on a shortwave radio.

Parker paints fluid shapes with his palate of acoustic guitar, bass, shimmering percussion, and Mellotron around delicate lyrics steeped in magic and longing. We’re led down winding paths to windows, mirrors, eyes: thresholds that beckon us somewhere within and beyond — into the night sky and back into the basement. Producer Sam Carlson renders these songs in a detailed chiaroscuro. Each strum rings out like a beam of light through dusty air in a home emptied and moved away from. Adam’s voice cuts through the veil and echoes down the hall.

08/28/2026

!!! CHILDREN'S MUSIC AT BEST VIDEO THIS SATURDAY !!!

Val McKee plays music for kids at Best Video Film & Cultural Center this Saturday morning, Aug. 29, at 10:30 AM.

Suggested donation is $5-10 per family but nobody will be turned away for lack of funds.

Music, movement, and storytelling have been ever-present in Val McKee’s life. Always the singer in her sibling’s living room band, Val grew up connecting music to play. It is a practice she brings into her classroom as an early childhood educator, songwriter, and performer. Val is presently a teacher with Leila Day Nurseries, Neighborhood Music School, and Southern Connecticut State University.

08/25/2026

THIS *** WEDNESDAY *** NIGHT !!!

Philadelphia act Strawberry Hands shares the bill with local ambient act The Regal Drug at Best Video Film & Cultural Center this Wed., Aug. 26. The show starts at 7 PM and the cover is $10.

Born 2006 in Philadelphia, Strawberry Hands is the songwriting project of poet, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Brunner (Weyes Blood, Karl Blau, Mike Bruno). The Strawberry Hands universe is one where basketball philosophy, Zen Buddhism, found poetry, and bedroom psychedelia somehow coexist without contradiction. Rounding out the ensemble are Jonathan Davenport (Dirty Projectors, Red Tailed Rounders), John Comune (Henbane, Bitter Wish), and Mark Ettingoff (Ghostwood Orchestra, Golden West Service).

The Regal Drug is the sonic brainchild of Scott N. Amore, born from an abandoned, busted piano discovered in a New Haven parking lot in the dead of night, 1995. What began as a spontaneous experiment in sound and electronics has evolved over three decades into an immersive recording and performance project. The current incarnation features a dynamic trio: Amore on keys and textures, joined by Ben Heller on trumpet and effects and Richard Brown on alto saxophone and guitar. Blending improvisation with deep electronic atmospheres, The Regal Drug channels three decades of exploration into moments of musical gratitude and raw expression.

08/22/2026

TONIGHT *** AT *** BEST VIDEO !!!

Power pop group Lucy's Neighbor and indie rockers Zoo Front share the bill at Best Video Film & Cultural Center tonight, Sat., Aug. 22. The show starts at 7 PM and the cover is $10.

Lucy’s Neighbor—named after the Mrs. Matilda Trumbull character in the “I Love Lucy” Sitcom—is an original indie rock/power pop band from New Haven. The members are Derek Di Fronzo (vocals); Dave Esposito (guitar); Tom Quagliano (drums) and Ed Flynn (bass). They will be playing songs from their four self-released CDs, the self-titled “Lucy’s Neighbor” (2011), “Over Easy” (2018), “Till It’s Gone” (2020), and "Long Road Home" (2023).

Zoo Front is a sonically eclectic original band always striving to evolve their sound. Each member brings their own somewhat divergent influences to the group, where ideas and genres are meshed and massaged to form a cohesive body of work. 2023’s “Re-Entry” album was a collection of songs taking listeners on a ride through a variety of musical styles and moods. Anyone who has witnessed a Zoo Front gig has been along for that ride, taking in a mix of new and old, soft and sultry, moody and energetic songs. A new batch of music is under development and promises to take the band and audience into uncharted territory.

Zoo Front is Ed Ekendu, Ju Dee Luna, Nancy Tatsapaugh, and Lisa Tonner.

You can find Zoo Front on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, You Tube Music, Apple Music and other streaming services.

Address

1842 Whitney Avenue
Hamden, CT
06517

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 7pm
Tuesday	8am - 7pm
Wednesday	8am - 7pm
Thursday	8am - 7pm
Friday	8am - 9pm
Saturday	8am - 7pm
Sunday	8am - 7pm

Telephone

+12032879286

Website

http://www.bestvideo.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Best Video Film & Cultural Center posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Best Video Film & Cultural Center:

Want your organization to be the top-listed Non Profit Organization in Hamden?