NYC Indie Film Temple Kim’s Video Remastered by Alamo Drafthouse in Basement of Lower Manhattan Multiplex

After succumbing to the death of physical home entertainment and subsequently settling in a Sicilian mountain town in New York, Kim’s main video creator, Eclectic Holdings, has returned home.

Alamo Drafthouse launched Kim’s Video Underground, a new outpost at the downtown Indie Cinema Temple, and in 2014 it closed completely after years of deadly fights amid increased streaming. It is located on the ground floor of Alamo New Lower Manhattan, which opened under an office building near the World Trade Center last October.

Alamo founder Tim Liga joined Young Kim’s iconic retailer and officials from Salem (population: 10,000) in New York and Italy at the reopening ceremony Wednesday night. About a third of Kim’s total collection of 55,000 records and VHS tapes is available for distribution, with the rest to be released over time.

Dedicating a tradition started by soldiers in Napoleon’s army in the 18th century, Kim used a sword to open a bottle of champagne. “Nobody died,” said the League. “Kim’s video will live forever!”

As with similar home video companies in North Carolina, Austin, and Los Angeles, Alamo allows customers to rent CDs or tapes for free, although customers must sign a credit card and agree to reimburse taxes. Alongside the food and cocktail offerings at the Alamo, the video allows customers to spend more time at the company’s venues.

“Come home today. Kim’s video is part of New York City’s historic filmmaking and independent culture,” said Anna del Castillo, New York City Mayor’s Commissioner for Media and Entertainment. But given that he had no trouble with the professional marks under his belt, which he would later take on as a producer and manager on PBS, he added with a laugh, “When I walked into Kim’s room, I felt pretty scared and wasn’t strong at all. ! But I knew it really shaped my sense of culture and community. It was a meeting place for creative people.”

The Quixote movement sent records and cassettes to Italy, while Kim’s recent locations screwed up operations that strengthened the store’s colorful heritage. Collectors were soon alarmed when plans for a resort and screening room in Sicily fell through and the boxes fell into storage.

Kim’s original was first released in 1986 in the East Village of St. Mark’s Place and a few more places were added soon. Originally a dry cleaning and food store, Kim decided to start offering videotape in the 1980s when VCRs began to gain popularity. In its heyday, Kim Square was a public arena for movies and has a magnificent collection of styles and times. and countries of origin. The staff, some of whom attended Wednesday’s ceremony, were known to be cunning and arrogant. Legend has it that Quentin Tarantino was once kicked out because he didn’t have a membership card and couldn’t remember his number.

The rise of the store coincided with the rise of independent filmmaking as a booming industry. It also corresponded to the waves of gentrification that changed the landscape of Manhattan Street. Eventually, Kim fell victim to a sharp decline in the physical home entertainment business as streaming became the default system for streaming movies. Unable to find an acceptable alternative to keep the entire collection intact, Kim made a deal with Salem.

In an interview with Deadline, he said he never felt comfortable with the recordings and tapes he had collected over the decades in such an unknown and remote setting. “I’ve visited about 10 times over the years,” he said. In the end, the collection was unharmed from the trip, he said.

Liga said it had “high suspicions from the start” that Kim’s actions kept him intact, and were concerned about the weakness of the VHS tape that the nonprofit Alamo archive department was slowly digitizing. He said the lower Manhattan area is an ideal home because it has a large amount of temperature-controlled storage. After the comeback plan was drawn up, he remembered that implementing it was like solving “100,000 puzzles.” The covers didn’t match the physical media, so we were trying to match them. It was four months of work by a team of five”.

While the league readily accepted that “opening a video store would be a crazy idea” as a general proposition, the Alamo had an advantage over existing real estate and staff. He wants thousands of ticket buyers to “take these adventures” and discover Kim at the Alamo, just as indie moviegoers have done for decades.

He also admitted with a smile, “Everything is so weird. He didn’t know if it was all a subtle fraud. ”