Sundance Review: Ashley Sabin And David Redmon’s Documentary ‘Kim’s Video’
deadline.comPremiering on the first day of the Sundance Film Festival, Kim’s Video is the perfect Sundance documentary, a playful and intelligent film that teases one thing and delivers quite another.
Just as 2012’s Searching for Sugar Man set out to find a missing soul singer and uncovered a secret history of anti-apartheid rebellion in South Africa, this affectionate and funny film by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon and playing in the fest’s Next lineup starts as a nerd’s quest and transforms into, well, actually two things: one a glorious shaggy dog story that somehow links a New York dry cleaner, the Coen brothers’ late fees, South Korea’s CIA and the Mafia, the other an astute and actually rather moving rumination on the very real social importance of film history.
The subject matter raises questions that have bugged even casual visitors to Manhattan of a certain age: Whatever happened to Kim’s chain of video stores, a cineaste’s treasure trove packed with cinematic rarities and classics?
And, secondly, who was this Kim, a shadowy figure who vanished after seeming to abandon his collection just as quickly as he amassed it?
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