Most people of a certain age hold a great deal of nostalgia for video stores. Depending on where you lived, that nostalgia might be for your local Blockbuster, but if you were lucky, you had something a little more curated than the big chains. For me, it was RAO Video. Opened in 1977, it was where all the cool kids in my hometown got their movies. When you wanted to find an obscure title that Blockbuster and Hollywood Video didn’t have, you went to RAO. If you lived in New York City, though, you went to Kim’s Video.
Written, directed, and edited by filmmaking duo David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video recounts the strange journey of Yongman Kim’s video stores, particularly the legendary East Village branch Mondo Kim’s. From a mainstay of in-the-know film fans to a casualty of the streaming economy, to a far more bizarre fate involving corrupt Italian politics and a brazen heist, Kim’s Video is a story about how far cinephiles will go to protect film access. Nostalgia for the glory days of video stores plays a part in the film’s affectionate obsession, but more importantly, Kim’s Video is about making sure that the days of discovering a forgotten gem survive. Nostalgia becomes grief when movies die in obscurity; forgotten, locked away, or outright lost by cinematic gatekeepers who don’t recognize how precious these movies truly are.
Kim’s Video speaks the language of cinephiles, drawing in viewers who are nostalgic for Mondo Kim’s and those who are hearing about it for the first time. Clips of films ranging from Paris, Texas to Manos: The Hands of Fate populate the documentary, and the narration is filled with movie quotes and references. Redmon likens himself to characters from Blow Out, The Conversation, and Blue Velvet. He reminisces over the New York City of Mixed Blood and Taxi Driver as he bemoans the loss of the video store landmark. Wild trivia tidbits — the Coen Brothers had $600 worth of late fees when the store closed, and Jean-Luc Godard once sent Kim a cease and desist letter for carrying a bootleg of Histoire(s) du cinéma — coexist with philosophical rallying cries for the protection (and proliferation) of rare and obscure films. One former employee said of legal action against Kim’s large bootleg collection: “I’m proud that we’ve made that available for people. We felt like we were above the law. Like, the law said: ownership mattered. We said: film knowledge matters more than ownership over movies.”
Taking a formally playful approach befitting its cinema-obsessed subject matter, the documentary cycles through genres as quickly and as fluidly as a stroll through the aisles of a video store. It alternates between investigative documentary, experimental film, and heist movie, becoming a bizarre and almost unbelievable thriller as the story unfolds. Kim announced that Mondo Kim’s would close in 2008 and that he would give the massive collection away to anyone who could fulfill specific criteria. Kim wanted the collection to remain intact, and he wanted store members to maintain access to the collection wherever it ended up. The town of Salemi, Sicily won the bid for the collection, proposing to launch a never-ending public film festival with it. However, as Redmon and Sabin found when they visited “Centro Kim” in Salemi, the fate of Mondo Kim’s was much stranger and sadder than what was promised.
The story of Mondo Kim’s is a fascinating microcosm of what it means to love film in an era when physical media seems to be dying. Cuts between old footage of Mondo Kim’s and Kim himself walking through the neglected storage space in Salemi are sad reminders of the current state of film accessibility. As Redmon says, “Cinema is a record of existence. 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.” Kim’s Video is an archive of an archive; a story of what Mondo Kim’s meant and still means to cinephiles all over the world. It’s also a celebration of film itself. This playful, introspective, and daring documentary becomes a part of Mondo Kim’s story, setting up a funhouse mirror that shows the true reflection of the people who would do anything to protect film access for those who truly love movies.
