‘Kims Video’ is a meandering shrine to a shuttered media palace with an afterlife
Carlos Aguilar April 4, 2024
The impermanence of
movies
amid the
riseadvent
of streaming services is a worrisome phenomenon. Online, a
movie film
can either completely vanish or be altered at the discretion of corporations. Only
owning
a physical copy can ensure ones access to a title in its original form or
sometimesaccess
at all. In such a dire landscape, the worlds remaining video stores
more than ever
occupy an imperative position as archives of our endangered collective memory.
Nestled somewhere
atalong
the intersection between fiction and reality, David Redmon and Ashley Sabins well
–
intentioned, at times riveting
,
but ultimately scatter
ed-
brained documentary Kims Video attempts to eulogize and eventually resurrect the mythical New York City chain of video stores that took its last
hard-fought
breath in 2014.
Yet, w
While
these Kim’s
shrines to cinephilia serve as
its the
connecti
veng
tissue, the
multiheaded tale also touches onblends , among other things,
Redmons
personal own quasi-spiritual
musings about
on
cinema,
as quasi-spiritual guide, as well as
an Italian politicians plausible mafia ties
,
and
biographical curios
facts about the video stores former owner.
Now that the artform has been, as Redmon puts it, dematerialized, with some productions solely existing as intangible data in a server somewhere, these places housing countless movies ripe for discovery no longer seem antiquated but almost revolutionary.
Behind the physical
–
media empire was Yongman Kim, a Korea
n
immigrant who ditched his dry-cleaning business for the allure of movies on VHS and, eventually,
on
DVD.
At the peak of his success
,
Kim owned seven video stores around the city. The flagship establishment on the Lower East Side, Mondo Kims, housed 55,000 titles, including bootleg copies of films otherwise unavailable in the U.S. and a plethora of obscure DIY projects.
The Kim’s
practice of illicitly obtaining movies resulted in FBI raids and a cease-and-desist letter from Jean-Luc Godards lawyers after Kim rented out a pirated version of the
auteur’s multipart
ButRedmon and Sabin The filmmakers
dont spend much time on Kims
rather
punk
criminal
acts in the name of
preservation and
cultural accessibility.
Instead Rather
, they stumble
upon into
a web of mysterious,
and
possibly nefarious
,
characters when they investigate what happened after
Kim closed
Mondo Kims closed for good. It was
and
decided
to ship that
the precious
physical media
collection
be shipped
to the small Italian town of Salemi in Sicily, where enthusiastic local authorities, namely the mayor at the time
,
Vittorio Sgarbi, promised to make good use of it.
Understandably angry, indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) questions the impractical and unsound choice to have the tapes and disc travel across the ocean.
Redmons loving devotion
for the collection, as
for the overseas tapes his white whale
, he says
entity,
comes through
as
when
he
visits Salemi on multiple occasions
. F , f
irst to unveil the damage caused to some of the
titles tapes
because of
outrageous
neglect, and later to learn more about those responsible. Theres
,
inevitably
, some
overlap
here
with Karina Longworths thorough 2012 piece for the
now defunct
Village Voice about the fate of Kims Video, but the globetrotting doc (which at one point takes Redmon to Kims native South Korea) suffers from a lack of focus. And yet, thats also what makes it come across as a
nmisshapen but
undeniably sincere love letter.
When the co-directors zero in on creating phantasmagorical imagery around Redmons symbolic transfiguration the movies in the collection speak to him until he
, in his mind,
becomes one with them
thats when
Kims Video
turns
becomes affecting
in a and
relatable
manner for to
equally obsessed movie lovers. He rationalizes every situation through a correlating scene in a
movie film
hes watched and, when he needs
themit most
,
summons
the ghosts of master directors, dea
dth
and alive,
who
manifest themselves in masks that his nameless accomplices wear to rescue the collection.
It’s
perhaps the only the documentary’s
straightforward title,
which
suggest
sing
something
which invokes the expectation that this is a more comprehensively objective,doc about the extinct film nirvana
that hurts it
the
most. Kims Video opens multiple doors
and dips its tiptoes in
but doesnt step into any of the rooms with its whole body. Its
partially
about a lot of ideas that converge
at around
the concept of the video store and its significance, but works more as a primer
about all of them
than a definitive text. Still
,
this
non-fiction
caper
/
-slash-personal
video
essay is an admirable endeavor that honors, above all, a filmmakers
obsession with fixation onthe a
medium that makes him whole.
