The Bindle Institute sometimes hosts a film event we call Tribunal. It seems to get people excited to watch a movie rather than mind-numbed and frustrated at scrolling through a list of infinite streaming options. Tribunal was developed during the pandemic when 6 of us lived together and acquired 1000 free VHS from Craigslist. Tribunal can be open-ended or themed, for example our yearly spooky tribunal seen in the flier above.

This is most fun with a large collection of physical media because it's nice to be able to just pick up the movie and read about it to the group instead of staring at phones. But it can work with online videos written down on slips of paper. If you want you can encourage friends to bring their own tapes. Sometimes if you're feeling silly you can throw in an N64 game or something instead of a tape :p



How we run Tribunal

1. gather at least 3 friends.

2. blast the Space Jam theme to build hype.

3. each person picks three VHS (or DVDs if you swing that way) and puts them on the collective game surface.

The number of tapes can be negotiated up or down before gameplay starts depending on the number of participants or how involved of a game you want to play. The 'game surface' is best as a large table but in lieu of that you can just use the floor.

4. once everyone has picked their tapes, arrange the tapes in an orderly manner and arrange the friends around the game surface in a circle. The game is ready to begin.

5. friends take turns going around the circle removing 1 tape from play at a time.

6. house rules at Bindle Institute are that each person is allowed to skip their turn one time during the game and also anyone can call for a re-rack (à la beer pong) at any time.

Allowing skips makes it so that no one can exactly predict who will pick the last tape. Also be careful not to damage your tapes when sliding around during a re-rack on a rough game surface! Re-racks do not directly affect the outcome of the game it's just fun to call it and to make new arrangements. Obv feel free to make your own house rules tho in our experience it's best not to change the rules mid-game as people may start to lose confidence in the validity of the process.

7. the last tape left is the one you all watch together.