Rida Video Centre: Saying goodbye to a movie store

SINGAPORE – On the second floor of Coronation Plaza in Bukit Timah, the 1980s never went away.

Thousands of paper cards – well-thumbed records, one a customer, listing what was borrowed and when – are stacked behind the counter at Rida Video Centre, one of Singapore’s last indie video rental shops.

A text-only spreadsheet running on an obsolete laptop serves as the 312 sq ft store’s database of titles.

For the last month, while closing out their accounts, a few customers have asked owner Laurel Khoo for their account cards.

She obliges them because she understands their need for a keepsake – the piece of paper holds memories of years of movies and TV shows. It is a link to a shop that will be gone by the end of April.

Most cards belong to customers whose accounts have been inactive for years. Madam Khoo, 66, never throws them away, just in case they have a change of heart.

She likes paper. Her tiny counter is festooned with handwritten reminders of everything from appointments to stock counts.

“When customers borrow a disc, they sign the card. So, we do not have to print a receipt. It’s been that way since day one. Clever,” she tells The Straits Times.

At a visit to the shop on March 8, 32-year-old film-maker and customer Edward Khoo, son of local writer-director Eric Khoo, says that on the previous day, it was “chock-a-block” with those who had read the news of Rida’s closure and were there to browse the closing sale or use up account credits by taking discs home or getting cash refunds.

He says that Madam Khoo was surprised and warmed by the surge, which contrasted with the dwindling number of walk-ins over the years as new technology made her service feel like a throwback to another age.

Since the April 30 closure of Rida was made public on Feb 21 on its Facebook page, about 70 per cent of the roughly 1,000 active members have turned up to take discs home, using up the remainder of their account value.

She wants to close the store, founded in 1985 at Serene Centre with her late husband Ooi Kai Peng, to spend time with her children and grandchildren.

But she wants to do it with a clear conscience – in person and through text messages, and reminds this reporter to tell customers to use their credits before it is too late. The last thing she wants is to exit with broken promises and hard feelings, she says.

For many who have shown up over the past weeks, the parting has been emotional.

Madam Khoo proudly shows off a pen sketch of the store’s interior – packed floor to ceiling with shelves – framed and given to her by a customer as a thank-you and goodbye. It now stands behind the counter.

But she turns sad as she shows a handwritten note from another customer.

“7 March 2026. Rida Video Centre, I wish you all the best. Thank you,” it says, outlined in neat handwriting. The customer, a man in his 30s who has autism, has travelled from Bedok to Coronation Plaza – where Rida moved to in 2015 – for years to borrow discs. News of the closure broke his heart.

“He came to me and asked, ‘But what about me?’” says Madam Khoo, with a pang in her voice.

Her plan is to move the soul of her store into another body. As at March 26, she has roughly 20,000 discs on her shelves. The current closing sale will further whittle down the stock.

After closure, she hopes the unsold portion will be accepted by the National Library Board (NLB) and other charitable bodies as donations. That way, her films will be available to anyone, she says. Several organisations have contacted her for donations, she adds.

Some old customers have turned up and, in a show of support, purchased discs along with new DVD and Blu-ray players to play them, to replace the sets they threw away long ago, she says.

Edward Khoo likes the place so much, he made a short film about it in 2020 titled Video Store. Set in Rida, the film is a nostalgic tribute to the era of video rental culture, created under the ciNE65 short film initiative. Madam Khoo appears towards the end of the three-minute work.

Besides Marvel blockbusters and Hong Kong and Taiwanese films and television series, Rida also stocks an impressive non-English art-house section. These are film festival favourites that customers have suggested Madam Khoo import. She had taken their advice, often taking on the effort and expense of sending titles to the Board Of Film Censors for classification.

Khoo has long enjoyed the shop’s tightly packed, everything-under-one-roof organisation – the joy of the lucky find becomes possible, he says.

“When you go to a bookstore, you don’t have to buy anything – it just feels good to be around books. It’s a similar vibe at Rida. It’s an unpretentious space. You will see art-house films on the shelf, but then you’re also going to have Minions next to them,” he says, referring to the popular 2015 animated comedy.

The fact that one can stumble onto Singaporean film-maker Jack Neo’s Ah Boys To Men comedies (2012 to 2017) and, close by, find an award-winning Norwegian drama, has long been a draw for South Korea-born lawyer Park Eun Jeong, 54.

She says that when she first came to the shop a couple of decades ago, she was drawn to Madam Khoo’s unique curatorial style.

“Back then, it was difficult to find European films in Singapore, but she brought in these idiosyncratic, artistic movies. Luckily, her taste and mine are similar,” she says.

Ms Park visits Rida with her husband and they often discuss what to borrow with Madam Khoo, who offers the human touch and personal service that beats anything the couple can find in the streaming services to which they subscribe.

Rida’s owner is not just a storehouse of film knowledge, but she is also keenly aware of customers’ tastes.

“It’s a joy to know that someone knows what I like,” says Ms Park.

For Khoo, a place like Rida cannot be replaced by streaming or algorithms.

He says: “If there is something I watch that I like, I’ll always remember that I got it from Rida. Maybe it sounds a bit romantic, but you’ve got to be romantic about these things. Otherwise, they go away.”