By Gregory Crofton
I first heard about Carnivalesque Films, owned and operated by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, around 2010 when their films “Made in Mardi Gras,” and “Kamp Katrina” aired on the Documentary Channel, which then reached more than 25 million homes via Dish Network and DIRECTV.
I managed the channel’s DOCStore, which sold DVDs of the films we broadcast. I was able to work with Sabin and Redmon in that they would ship me DVDs of their films to sell in the store. I was in awe of their work then and remain so today.
Their latest feature “Kim’s Video” tells the story of the infamous chain of New York City video and music stores of the same name. At its peak, Kim’s had seven locations around the city. The draw was its knowledgeable staff and a highly curated collection of more than 50,000 videos, some of which were bootlegged.
Yongman Kim
An enigmatic man and aspiring filmmaker named Yongman Kim built the chain. It’s first location opened in 1987 inside a dry-cleaning business.
I lived in Connecticut in the 80s and 90s, so I’d take the train into the city and ended up at Mondo Kim’s in the East Village a couple of times. It was a neat place, packed with cool stuff and edgy culture. A place you wouldn’t forget.
And Redmon certainly never forgot his visits to Kim’s Video. In the documentary, we learn that as a teenager he moved from Texas to New York to pursue making movies for a living. Kim’s Video fast developed into the place he felt most at home. It was the sense of community, and finding so many films that moved him. Redmon eventually left the city and began to make his own films.
Around the same time, business at Kim’s began to decline with the slow steady rise of Internet video. By 2008, they closed and decided to donate their huge video collection to somebody who would care for it properly and digitize it, that way it could be available to “lifetime” members of the video store and the broader public.
Probably because Kim is an unconventional man, and someone who has gone on to pursue other types of business, he agreed to a rash decision to donate the collection to an “arts group” in Salemi, Italy.
Salemi is a small city in Sicily that was struggling economically. The loosely laid plan was for Kim’s Video collection to help revitalize the arts scene and draw tourists. It didn’t work out that way.
How do we know? An indefatigable Redmon went to Salemi with his camera and found out what the hell was going on. He and Sabin were able to locate the stash of Kim’s videos, but they were stored in a building with a leaking roof! The thousands of tapes and DVDS had been unpacked and left in disarray, some had water damage, and none were available to the public or digitized.
So began the six-year odyssey it took for Redmon and Sabin to make this film. Along the way they become friends with Kim. They also confront a member of the Sicilian mafia, and sort of get to know a corrupt, smug art Italian critic who worked briefly as the mayor of Salemi.
It takes a little while for this story to build, but Redmon, who narrates the film, is consumed with making things right. He will not give up. I won’t ruin this tale of Italian cinema by telling you more. It’s just too good, you’ve got to watch.
Trailer below, and you can rent the documetary here.