Dear Shaded Viewers,
Who remembers browsing the endless shelves of VHS boxes in search of obscure films at Kim’s Video stores in the East Village? Back in 1993, I sold a copy of my notorious video collaboration with feminist Camille Paglia, Glennda and Camille Do Downtown, to the Kim’s on Avenue A for rental to their customers.
If you’ve been following the saga of Kim’s Video, you’ll know that the entire collection of Kim’s VHS tapes and DVDs have been on quite a journey since 2009, when they were sent to a tiny town in Sicily. (The Kim’s Video documentary travels to Salemi for a video rescue mission.)
And now, a bunch of those VHS tapes are being hand-picked by ex-Kim’s employees and offered as free rentals through the Alamo Drafthouse. And some of them are being screened in their original VHS format.
In this 1990 clip from my public access series “The Brenda and Glennda Show,” Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm visit Kim’s Video on Avenue A to discuss queer themes in cinema.
Poster for “Glennda and Camille Do Downtown” created for the 1994 Sundance Film Festival
On Thursday, June 13 at 7pm, there will be a free screening of the recently unearthed VHS copy of Glennda and Camille Do Downtown, along with Jim Bidgood’s legendary 1971 hallucinatory gay film Pink Narcissus, hosted by Kim’s Video. (I hope they use a head cleaner on the VCR beforehand!) The program will be introduced by Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of Red Scare podcast fame. I’ll also be on hand to introduce my video. The screening will take place at:
66 Greenpoint Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11222
Hope to see you there!
Glenn Belverio
P.S. – Check out my podcast interview with Howl in the Wilderness where I discuss queer culture in the 1980s and ’90s, my friendships and collaborations with Bruce LaBruce and Camille Paglia, trans ideology, porn, the post-queer movement, queer zines and more: https://shorturl.at/vpLsR
