Eric Hynes

For two decades, New York City cinephiles had access to a treasure trove of rare and esoteric films through Kim's Video. Originally run by the enigmatic Yongman Kim out of his dry-cleaning business, his franchise eventually amassed 55,000 rental titles. In 2008, facing a changing industry, Mr. Kim offered to give away his collection provided that it stay intact and be available to Kim's Video members. In a bid to revitalize tourism, the small Italian village of Salemi, Sicily became home to the archive. But after the initial publicity faded, so too did any sign of the collection. Enter filmmaker David Redmon, who credits Kim's Video for his film education. With the ghosts of cinema past leading his way, Redmon embarks on a seemingly quixotic quest to track down what happened to the legendary collection and to free it from purgatory.

In response to the cancellation of film festivals around the world and disruption in the lives and work of filmmakers, Eric Hynes, Damon Smith, and Jeff Reichert filmed and edited the documentary ROOM H.264: Quarantine, April 2020 over the course of the last two weeks. Shot via Skype, it features those whose work was slated to screen at festivals like SXSW, CPH:DOX, Tribeca, First Look, and more. The documentary depicts a broad range of filmmakers, each sequestered in their own spaces in locations throughout North America, Europe, Africa, and beyond, responding to a question first posed by Wim Wenders in his classic 1982 documentary experiment Room 666, and perhaps newly resonant today: “Is cinema becoming a dead language—an art form which is already in decline?”

An homage to Wim Wenders’ documentary Room 666. Over True/False weekend, a variety of True/False filmmakers will find themselves alone in a hotel room, facing a camera and a provocative prompt: “Is cinema a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?”

This film, to be shot, edited, finished, and screened all within the dates of the First Look festival, is an open-ended homage to Wim Wenders's documentary Room 666. As in Wenders's original, visiting filmmakers, alone with a camera in a hotel room, will answer the question "Is cinema a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?" Participants will include an international selection of filmmakers visiting for First Look 2018.

Made from footage captured at Brooklyn’s BAMcinemafest in June 2016 in which filmmakers were left alone in a hotel with a camera and a question: "Is cinema a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?" An homage to Wim Wenders’s documentary Room 666, in which the same question was posed to directors such as Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ROOM H.264: Brooklyn, NY, June 2016 serves as a revealing document about the current state of American independent film, as well as a provocative rumination about how we see and experience the world.

Follows a variety of New York characters as they navigate personal relationships and unexpected problems over the course of one day.