New York Metropolis’s fabled film rental chain, Kim’s Video, shuttered its downtown areas all through the early-to-mid aughts, providing an early warning signal that the cinema as we as soon as knew it was dying, or a minimum of migrating to different codecs.
The chain’s disappearance left an open wound amongst decrease Manhattan movie buffs, stranding Kim’s lots of of 1000’s of members and not using a good place — anyplace, really — to hire films, whereas abandoning a set of 55,000 VHS tapes and DVDs that encompassed every little thing from horror flicks like C.H.U.D. to the whole works of Paul Morrissey to bootleg copies of Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma.
Kim’s Video
The Backside Line
A film buff’s acte de résistance.
What occurred to Kim’s treasure trove of movies remained a thriller for fairly a while, with occasional tales popping up — together with a long-form Village Voice piece by film critic and podcaster Karina Longworth (You Should Bear in mind This) — explaining that the chain’s huge video assortment was packed right into a transport container and relocated to Sicily, of all locations.
Within the documentary Kim’s Video, premiering in Sundance’s NEXT sidebar, director-partners Ashley Sabin and David Redmon (Lady Mannequin) elucidate some, if not all, of the enigmas behind the Kim’s saga, providing up a freewheeling investigation that’s each a cinephile’s homage and an beginner heist flick, stirring up previous controversies whereas creating a brand new one. It’s a enjoyable look ahead to these fortunate sufficient to have identified Kim’s when it was round, however might additionally curiosity anybody involved by the destiny of an establishment that was to NYC what the Cinémathèque as soon as was to Paris, offering budding filmmakers with a spot to congregate (and, in Kim’s case, to work for low wages) whereas dipping right into a bottomless effectively of film historical past.
A few of these former employees-turned-auteurs, together with administrators Robert Greene (Procession) and Alex Ross Perry (Hear Up Philip) and cinematographer Sean Value Williams (Good Time), are interviewed within the doc, which at first performs out like a reasonably commonplace exposé. We find out how the chain was based in 1987 on the Decrease East Aspect by Yongman Kim, an bold and considerably shady Korean immigrant who began off within the dry cleansing enterprise and pivoted to video shops when he realized there was a requirement for uncommon, underground and imported VHS tapes within the neighborhood.
He quickly expanded to 5 different areas within the metropolis and a set that contained actually each film Kim might put his fingers on. This included international movies he would bootleg from cassettes loaned to him by worldwide embassies uptown, prompting the FBI to raid Kim’s shops a number of occasions with a purpose to seize the tapes, just for Kim to dub them another time.
What made Kim’s Video so legendary was certainly this very downtown punk method to cinema — the place the legality of what you had been renting wasn’t all the time sure, the place the early shorts of Alain Resnais sat on cabinets close by cult gadgets like Frank Henenlotter’s Mind Injury and the movies of transgressive artist Nick Zedd, and the place snobby clerks would virtually spit on you in case you requested for one thing that wasn’t of their canon.
All of this serves as background for what Sabin and Redmon are actually after, which is to attempt to perceive why, after closing his final location in 2008, Kim determined to donate everything of his assortment to the tiny Sicilian metropolis of Salemi (inhabitants slightly below 11,000), the place it was meant to be was some form of Kim’s archive/lending library.
This, alas, by no means occurred, and the administrators journey all the best way to Sicily to resolve issues, chasing down doubtful Italian politicians — together with TV artwork critic and Silvio Berlusconi crony Vittorio Sgarbi — whereas almost getting chased out of city. By way of a lot harassing, all of it accomplished in damaged Italian or with the assistance of a translator, they wind up uncovering a narrative that performs out like a low-budget caper, replete with corruption, slippery personalities, lacking money and one precise theft.
Till the top, Yongman Kim and his Sicilian companions stay elusive in regards to the deal they made, and also you’ve acquired to offer the filmmakers credit score for not solely exposing a lot of what went down, but in addition trying to save lots of the fated video assortment within the course of. Much less profitable are the numerous references they use as an example the motion, chopping in clips from La Dolce Vita, Blow-Up, The Dialog, Blue Velvet and different classics in a really literal method, as if to show that they too are bona fide Kim’s devotees.
Their inquiry finally results in a contented ending that hardcore movie buffs are little question grateful for, however there’s one other query surrounding Kim’s disappearance that is still kind of unexplored: Saving Kim’s could profit New Yorkers nonetheless eager for its snarky workers and photocopied cassette jackets, however what does it say in regards to the basic state of cinema when such a spot feels extra like a museum than someplace individuals go to get their films, in the event that they’re nonetheless getting films in any respect?
Many cinephiles are nostalgics at coronary heart, and the story of how Kim’s Video was based, misplaced and ultimately discovered once more appears to replicate a higher story about how the cinema, whether or not consisting of Palme d’Or winners or Z-grade slashers, has been pushed to the margins of common tradition — to be fondly remembered in documentaries like this.
