Kim's Video

David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's 2023 documentary follows the collection of a video shop that closed in New York. For years Kim's Video held more than fifty thousand tapes on the Lower East Side; films that could not be found anywhere else were there and the shop became the school of a generation of cinephiles. When it closed, its owner Yongman Kim donated the collection to Salemi in Sicily, a town that promised a cultural project. Arriving years later, Redmon finds the tapes in a warehouse, mildewed and inaccessible, the council having done none of what it promised. From there the documentary goes somewhere strange: the director makes a plan to take the collection back and the film becomes a cinephile theft. The account is full of references to film history. Who it's for: viewers who like film culture and unconventional documentary. Who it's not for: anyone expecting an objective account; the director is inside the events.