Marion Stokes was a Philadelphia civil-rights activist and eccentric, a former Communist and librarian-turned-local-TV-personality, who, thanks to investing in Apple (Steve Jobs was just one of her obsessions) became independently wealthy. From 1979 to her 2012 death she indulged in "hoarding" manias, including using VCRs (and only VCRs; she feared potential surveillance via later digital tech) to continuously tape news and public-affairs TV programs 24/7.
The paranoid, controlling Marion was evidently not much on explaining herself, but in filmmaker Matt Wolf's interpretation, she questioned or distrusted mainstream US media coverage of the Iranian revolution (and, by extension, American racism, and race relations; Marion herself had two mixed marriages). With the advent of ABC's Nightline, Ted Turner's CNN, and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, she was compelled to capture everything topical on air. Thousands of VHS and Betamax cassettes overflowed her residences, a multi-faceted news-and-punditry cycle of 35 years of history, and thanks to Marion, we see September 11, 2001, unfolding in real-time on four different channels.
While mental illness/OCD seems an unavoidable diagnosis, Stokes's vast stacks of tapes found a surprisingly profound afterlife, vindicating the enigmatic heroine, though whether she was visionary or a crank is open to interpretation. There is built-in interest for African-American themed collections here, and disc extras include episodes of Input, the local Pennsylvania public-affairs show that featured Stokes. Recommended. Aud: P, C. (C. Cassady)