What kind of person can be called a movie fan? Have you binge-watched a movie three to five times, are you familiar with the people behind it, or do you often attend major film festivals?
The newly released documentary "Golden Video Store" focuses its lens on a group of hardcore movie fans.
They traveled across the ocean with their cameras, directed and acted in a "theft" blockbuster, just so that their beloved movie discs could find a good home.
"Kim's Video Store" is a documentary that completely transitions from to . For non-movie fans, this story is too crazy. It is full of controversial issues that touch the boundaries of the law. Even the way the image itself was shot is questionable. But from the perspective of a movie fan, this film is both mid-range and passionate. After watching it, I can't help but want to shout "Long live the movie".
That's because the film's directors, David Redmond and Ashley Sabin , are genuine "cinephiles". From shooting to editing to narration, they bring in all kinds of private goods. , ordinary people are confused after watching it, but movie fans smile knowingly after watching it.
The film opens with a scene from Wenders' " Texas Paris " , introducing the director David's past experience with the film: his parents gave birth to him when he was 17, and he lived with his grandparents when he was 6 years old. David became obsessed with movies through the television screen.
movies formed part of David's spiritual world and inspired his subsequent film production. Later, David moved to New York and found a movie disc rental store called "Kim's Video Store", which had a collection of nearly 255,000 discs. In addition to popular films, there are also some experimental films that have never been publicly released, copies of films that were rejected by film festivals, and all kinds of rare films. It can be said that it is a paradise for movie fans.
The owner of the video store is called Kim Yong-man . He is a Korean immigrant. He came to New York in 1979 and first opened a laundry shop. Because the pirated discs accidentally placed in the store became more popular than the laundry business, he decided to change his career.
In that era when videotapes and DVDs still dominated the movie rental market, Boss Jin made a lot of money and opened many branches. Even great directors Quentin and the Coen brothers came to rent discs.
But with the advent of the digital age, movie discs, an entity that once carried the feelings of movie fans, have become a thing of the past along with film movies.
Jin's video store is no exception. In this big wave of upgrading, Boss Jin not only has to face the dilemma of market decline, but also has to deal with FBI raids, because most of his collection is illegal and pirated discs. . Pirated DVDs have always been controversial, but Boss Jin believes that movie knowledge is more important than movie property rights.
Until the last store closed, the retention of these nearly 55,000 discs became the biggest problem.
After comprehensively comparing multiple buyers, Boss Jin decided to donate these discs to a small town called Salami on the island of Sicily, Italy.
This place is only 42 kilometers away from Corleone. It is the filming location of the movie "The Godfather", which is the perfect destination for the movie discs in Boss Jin's mind.
It wasn’t until 2017 that a young man who claimed to be a member of “Jin’s Video Store” traveled across the ocean and came to this small town, only to discover that this new “Jin’s Video Store” had claimed that it would be open to movie fan members and keep the discs properly. "The store" has long been closed, and due to weather and other reasons, the discs were seriously affected by moisture, and many of them were damaged.
Why did the discs that movie fans dream about become a pile of discarded garbage?
It turns out that the former mayor of the town, Vittorio Sgarbi, did plan to turn "Kim's Video Store" into a local art center after receiving donated discs, and was therefore approved for a considerable amount of construction funds. .
But the money eventually fell into the pockets of the local mafia, and the actual funds used for "Jin's Video Store" were only US$30,000.
The former mayor of the town, Scarabi, used this political achievement to rise to great success and became the deputy minister of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Moreover, through David's lens, you can see that the mafia members and Sgabi are inseparable. The entanglement behind the scenes is obviously beyond David's ability.But seeing these 55,000 discs discarded like worn-out shoes, David, as a movie fan, was really unwilling to accept them. The
movie inspired David again. He studied the plot of "Escape from Tehran " , convened a crew, and asked the crew members to wear the masks of Godard, Jackie Chan, Hitchcock, Jarmusch, Spielberg and other filmmakers. , on the pretext of filming a movie related to this, stole these discs and transported them to New York. After going round and round, the disc finally returned to the hands of movie fans through "cheating" methods from the hands of liar politicians, achieving its best destination.
When the director presented this journey of "rescuing" the disc, he also used many classic movie clips to reflect his state of mind. For example, use the scene in Abbas' "Where is My Friend's Home" in which a little boy goes to find his friend to correct an injustice to express his dissatisfaction with his beloved disc being exiled in a foreign country, and when he goes to save it? urgent mood.
Before leaving for Italy, he used a scene from the movie " Sweet Life " to express the disc's call to him. After
discovered that the disc had not been properly kept, he used a shocking scene in the movie "Blue Velvet" to express his inner desire for the truth.
As a documentary, "Kim's Video Store" is alternative , not only because of its collage-like presentation of film culture in editing, but also because of its expansion of the boundaries between reality and fiction in documentaries.
The director, who was supposed to remain objective and neutral in the documentary, directly participated in the narrative, shot subjectively from a first-person perspective, and created the most dramatic scene of the film, in which a group of fans wore the masks of the filmmakers to "save the rescue" "Movie. This metaphor itself constitutes the greatest charm of the film, and it is also its most controversial aspect. So many people suspected that this was a fake documentary.
But as David said in the film: "Movies are witnesses of existence." The director's participation in this matter itself constitutes a part of the reality. Movies inspired cinephiles, and this group of rebellious "movie fanatics" then reached reality through fiction, completing the theme narrative of "movies are supreme".
Reality and fiction merged in this carnival-style disc theft operation. It’s hard to tell who saved the movie: Quentin, Jarmusch, Hitchcock, David, Boss Jin, and the members of the video store. Without them, this feat would not have been possible from fiction to reality.
André Bazin, "the father of the New Wave of Cinema," once said: "Film is a veritable art of love. For movies, loving people is crucial."
Such a seemingly absurd story Behind the scenes, it reflects the love of countless cinephiles for movies. This love itself is the biggest driving force behind the completion of this film.
In the end, these discarded discs returned to the hands of people who truly loved and cherished them. Their artistic value has also been activated again. As of the completion of the documentary, more than 1,700 movies have been rented in the new store.
Times change and technological development will change the form of film communication, but the film art itself is immortal as long as the people who love it are still there.
Feibai
Editor-in-charge Chen Lingling
