The Brooklyn Rail

Music has vinyl. Books abound in spite of their audio or e-book alter egos. Most of us think of prints and paintings and pottery as art before we think of NFTs. But what about the movies? Tapes and DVDs don’t possess the cool caché of vinyl, and film reels don’t have vinyl’s accessibility. In Ashley Sabin and David Redmon’s 2023 documentary Kim’s Video, Redmon observes of the movies that “The physicality of the object is now dematerialized.” The Wrap recently explored what goes into deciding which TV shows get the privilege of going to DVD. In spite of the bajillions of titles on the plethora of streaming services, it’s still possible not to find what you’re looking for. Even worse, you might only find what you’re looking for.

Sabin and Redmon make a compelling case for why an out-of-business video store’s collection of thousands of DVDs and VHS tapes remains not only relevant to our contemporary on-demand culture but also necessary to both the preservation and continuation of cinematic history. “Cinema is a record of existence,” Redmon’s voiceover declares in the film, “It retains traces of lives lived, of phantoms, ghosts, and, when it’s thoughtfully organized as an archive, it’s our collective memory of the living dead.”

For those who weren’t members, Kim’s Video and Music was a New York City video rental store founded by Youngman Kim (who originally started out as the owner of a drycleaning business where he happened to have some movies). Kim’s Video played a unique role in the artsy downtown scene; Kim was passionate about collecting all kinds of film, including obscure ones at risk of being lost or never seen. When the stores finally went out of business, the Sicilian town of Salemi convinced Kim to donate his collection to them as part of a citywide project to invest in arts and culture. That project never quite came to fruition for a variety of mysterious reasons—many of which seem quite sketchy—that Redmon dons the detective hat to investigate in his film. What Redmon discovers is a tattered collection, damaged and in disarray, at risk of being lost to film history forever.

Back in the days of Kim’s and Blockbusters, there was an excitement associated with visiting the video store and selecting movies to watch, an excitement that just doesn’t quite click when clicking through titles on your TV. Kim’s Video reveals something deeper and more integral than excitement to the video store experience: the unique opportunity to have a connoisseur curate a collection of film, including mainstream, indie, and beyond. And it’s all the more special being a connoisseur who built his knowledge and interests outside of mainstream Hollywood or academia. One scene in the doc shows a random movie pick from a package upon the arrival of Kim’s collection in Salemi. The first movie held up to the celebratory crowd? A porno.

What’s more is the sense of community that pervades interviews with former Kim’s employees, a community that extended beyond the film lovers who worked and went to the iconic store into the Village underground arts world—and where the Coen brothers owed 600 dollars in late fees. Film not only lost its physicality with the death of the video store, an entire scene lost a physical forum. Shots of downtown New York flit across Sabin and Redmon’s screen, including one of St. Mark’s Place (where Kim’s Video used to be located); an empty lot on the corner reveals the side of the next building which someone has used as a gravestone to graffiti “R.I.P. St. Mark’s.”

While it might be your papa’s video store, it’s not your papa’s documentary. Redmon builds his case with all the charm and flair of the silver screen, spinning a tale complete with mystery, mafia, a crime of passion (committed for love of the movies), international intrigue, a rescue mission, a heist.

“It was like a movie scene of Scorsese,” narrates Redmon during a tense moment in Italy driving with former Salemi mayor Vittorio Sgarbi (who is always shadowed by a man accused of having mafia ties) through a hellish red-lit tunnel. Throughout the film, Mr. Kim himself takes the shape of a legend—awe-inspiring, enigmatic, a little frightening, and rarely seen by his acolyte employees. He’s described as a “church-going dad” who melded with the New York underground. Redmon explains how hard it was to contact Kim. While watching the scene in Twin Peaks with the red room and Michael J. Anderson saying, “Some of your friends are here,” Redmon is, at last, contacted by Kim. The narrative takes on a slightly weird and foreboding feel, like Redmon’s destiny has found him. Indeed, for Redmon, film seems to be an almost spiritual experience and Kim’s Video a sort of lost church.

Kim’s Video is split between solving a mystery and making an homage to cinema history. Redmon takes a diaristic approach to the film, weaving shots from influential films with his essayistic voiceover, almost as if the movies are his own memories. Embracing the mystical, the voices of Kim’s collection, the DVDs and tapes themselves speaking, whisper to Redmon to find them, to understand what happened to them, to save them. These elements evoke an emotional truth about one film geek’s passion for the movies.

While documentaries often rely on observation, Redmon takes an active role—even though we never actually see him—as if the camera itself were an action hero. Perhaps the camera is the most fitting superhero for a doc featuring the voices of films past and a wild mission driven by passion for the movies. Kim’s Video is not really about Redmon or Kim or former employees or Sgarbi. It’s not about being kind and rewinding to a past where we rent movies at a store instead of subscribing from our couch. It’s about preserving the record and adding to it. It’s about creating a history for future creators to build upon. As Redmon’s film notes, “Film knowledge matters more than ownership over movies.” It’s about finding more than you were ever looking for. And thanks to Alamo Drafthouse, you can look for yourself at their recreation of the store in their FiDi theater with 15,000-plus VHS and DVDs for rent.