Fremantle and Carnivalesque Films to partner on a new feature documentary, Kim’s Video, which unearths the stranger-than-fiction story of New York’s beloved Kim’s Video Collection, the legendary video rental store in New York City.
The feature documentary is directed by award-winning filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Girl Model, Mardi Gras: Made in China), and executive produced by Fremantle’s Head of Global Documentaries, Mandy Chang (Collective, Writing with Fire, Welcome to Chechnya).
It was also announced today that Kim’s Video has been chosen as one of the select titles to have a world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, screening as the opening day film of the NEXT section.
Kim’s Video follows modern-day cinephile and filmmaker, David Redmon, on a quixotic quest to track down the whereabouts of the massive video collection of the now-defunct Kim’s Video, an iconic NYC video rental store with more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies. Playing with the forms and tropes of cinema, David’s bizarre and increasingly obsessive quest takes him to Sicily, where he becomes entangled in a web of local politics, and to South Korea, where he tracks down the enigmatic Mr. Kim in the hope of influencing the collection’s future. A love-letter to cinema, this film will strike a chord with anyone who has ever rented a movie.
Mandy Chang, Head of Global Documentaries at Fremantle and Executive Producer, Kim’s Video said: “When we saw this quirky feature documentary pitched by David and Ashley at the DIG Festival in Modena, we fell in love with the idea of it. Mr. Kim’s Video Store, which originally opened in 1984 inside a dry cleaning business on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was a magnet for filmmakers and film lovers. Big name directors, like Scorsese, Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, were members of this iconic institution.
“When the video rental era ended and films found their way online, Mr. Kim’s store closed, and the main collection ended up in the town of Salemi in Southern Italy. David’s obsession to discover the fate of those videos intrigued us, as did the enigmatic Mr. Kim, and we jumped on board, keen to go on the journey and motivated, like David by our own passion for cinema. The resulting film is a stranger-than-fiction odyssey that we hope will strike a chord with movie lovers everywhere.”
David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Directors and Producers, Kim’s Video: “I went to Sicily to rent a movie and then my life turned upside down!”, said David.
Ashley added: “One Saturday afternoon my partner David left home to rent a movie from Kim’s Video and he came back six years later with the wrong VHS! I told him to get a No Wave movie from the 1980s and he brought home a reality TV series.”
Kim’s Video is directed and produced by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for Carnivalesque Films. Mandy Chang and Bernie Kay are exec producing for Fremantle Global Documentaries along with Angela Neillis for Fremantle International.
Kim’s Video is the latest premium documentary backed by Fremantle as the global producer continues to build its name in the genre with a slate of high-end programming and collaborations. Recently announced projects include Mrs. America (Anonymous Content and Spinning Nancy) directed by the acclaimed Penny Lane (Hail Satan, Listening to Kenny G), along with the new iconic fashion series Kingdom of Dreams from Misfits, the team behind McQueen, which had its U.S. debut at DOC NYC.
Just this month, Fremantle announced it had taken a majority stake in several acclaimed international documentary production companies; 72 Films (All or Nothing: Arsenal, 9/11: One Day in America), natural history and premium factual content production company, Wildstar Films (America the Beautiful, Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory) and, most recently, Silvio Productions (formerly known as EGG Films), the successful Israeli independent production company (Shadow of Truth, The Baby Daddy and Buried).
