KIM’S VIDEO
Equal parts cinema history and gonzo journalism, this doc conjures the halcyon days of legendary New York City rental shop Kim’s Video and investigates the mysterious whereabouts of its extensive collection of titles. With its carefully curated selection of 55,000 films and a 250,000-person membership base, Kim’s Video was the vital epicenter of New York’s cinephile community. Filmmaker David Redmon was one of these impressionable young movie lovers, and in this film Redmon and co-director Ashley Sabin recount the fascinating saga of owner Yongman Kim, whose penchant for stocking bootleg copies of rare films made his store a frequent target of government raids and the recipient of a cease-and-desist letter from Jean-Luc Godard. When the business shuttered, Mr. Kim made the unusual decision to donate his collection to the tiny Sicilian village of Salemi. Ten years later and with no screening room in sight, Redmon travels to Salemi with camera in tow, leading to a surprisingly hair-raising series of escapades in which Redmon frequently finds himself on the wrong side of small-town Sicilian authorities. The result is a film as unpredictable and idiosyncratic as one of the titles Mr. Kim might have stocked back in the day.
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