Kim's Video

Synopsis

Playing with the forms and tropes of various cinema genres, the filmmaker sets off on a quest to find a legendary lost video collection of 55,000 movies in Sicily. For two decades, New York City cinephiles had access to a treasure trove of rare and esoteric films through Kim's Video. Originally run by the enigmatic Yongman Kim out of his dry-cleaning business, his franchise eventually amassed 55,000 rental titles. In 2008, facing a changing industry, Mr. Kim offered to give away his collection provided that it stay intact and be available to Kim's Video members. In a bid to revitalize tourism, the small Italian village of Salemi, Sicily became home to the archive. But after the initial publicity faded, so too did any sign of the collection. Enter filmmaker David Redmon, who credits Kim's Video for his film education. With the ghosts of cinema past leading his way, Redmon embarks on a seemingly quixotic quest to track down what happened to the legendary collection and to free it from purgatory. 
David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's playful documentary embraces various filmic forms, from cine-essay and investigative nonfiction to experimental cinema and even heist movies, to fashion an ode to the love of cinema and the enduring power its stories hold.

Directors' Biography

Ashley Sabin David Redmon Directors

Filmmaking duo David Redmon and Ashley Sabin together produce, direct, photograph and edit critically acclaimed cinematic documentaries that have screened internationally in festivals and on television worldwide at Sundance, Toronto, Cinema du Reel, Rotterdam, Visions du Reel, RIDM, MoMA, and Viennale Film Festivals and on PBS, POV, BBC, CBC, DR, ARTE, and NHK. Their body of work includes four recent “animal ethnography” films based in the world of donkeys and funded by the Leverhulme Trust: Sanctuary (2017), Do Donkeys Act? (2017), Choreography (2014), and Herd (2015); two dream/memory cinema poems Sentient 1 & 2 (2015/2016); a 6 minute snowbound ballet mécanique, Neige (2016); a suite of U.S. post-industrialization themed films set inside three interconnected factories on the coast of Prospect Harbor, Maine: Downeast (2012), Night Labor (2013), and Kingdom of Animal (2012); a feature documentary about the labyrinthine world of teenage modeling in which a New York based scout recruits Siberian teenagers to the Tokyo model market Girl Model (2011); a film linking China and New Orleans through globalized manufacturing of cheap throwaway goods for American leisure pursuit, Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) and two “carnivalesque” character driven films set in Louisiana Kamp Katrina (2007) and Invisible Girlfriend (2009). Lastly, set on the U.S. Mexico border, a longitudinal love story about family relationships and the meaning of “home” Intimidad (2008), which has been described as “a documentary fairytale of truly humbling proportions.” A former Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University with a PhD in sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York, David Redmon is now a lecturer in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, UK. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient, Ashley Sabin earned a M.F.A. at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec and graduated with high honors in Art History, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.