So whatever happened to Mondo Kim's extensive video and DVD collection?

After Mondo Kim's closed on St. Mark's Place in December 2008, the massive collection of some 60,000 tapes and DVDs were shipped off to a town in Sicily, as Jeremiah Moss first noted.

The plans called for "a Never-ending Festival — a 24-hour projection of up to 10 films at once for the foreseeable future ... and, eventually, the conversion of all Kim's VHS films to DVDs to ensure their preservation."

And, eventually, the plan was for Kim's members to have access to digitized versions of all these films, an assortment of cult classics and hard-to-find treasures ... anyway, seemed like an interesting idea... especially since no one around here wanted the collection. (Here was Mr. Kim's public offer.)

So. Some four years later, whatever happened to all this? In an extensive piece at the Village Voice this week, Karina Longworth investigated.

"Nothing is going on with those videos. All the videos are rotting in a Salemi room in mice shit," one source there lamented.

Ugh. While the situation turns out not to be quite that dire, the collection's future still seems unresolved.

You can read the whole piece here for all the details.