Features

Carmine Street Guitars

Ron Mann
Kanada 2018
80 min
V'18

Rick Kelly betreibt seit Jahrzehnten in Greenwich Village den pittoresken Shop Carmine Street Guitars, wo er Gitarren konstruiert: jede ein Einzelstück, jede ein Kunstwerk. Die Kamera gleitet über Bünde, Saiten, Gitarrenhälse, Volume-Regler und kunstvolle Schnitzereien, die mit geradezu fetischistischer Lust in Szene gesetzt werden. Was Kellys Arbeit vollends einzigartig macht, ist, dass er ausschließlich Hölzer aus alten Hotels, Bars, Kirchen und andern lokalen Gebäuden verwendet. Der Rockgitarrist Lenny Kaye, der wie viele andere Gitarrenstars zu den regelmäßigen Besuchern des Geschäftes zählt, sagt einmal: „It’s like playing a piece of old New York.“ (Thomas Mießgang)

 

You could call Rick Kelly the last man standing. For decades he has been running a guitar shop in Greenwich Village where he crafts custom-made guitars with the help of his young apprentice Cindy Hulej. Surrounded by luxurious restaurants, and buzzer-door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche in a gentrified area, Carmine Street Guitars remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification. Rick Kelly uses only reclaimed woods from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings and transforms them into fantastic creations of all sizes, shapes and colors. The camera shows the details of a number of instruments – necks, frets, strings, pickups – in close-ups with a certain fetishistic tinge and delights in the cozy atmosphere of the small space jampacked with tools and instruments. Carmine Street Guitar is not only a guitar shop, but a meeting point for guitar players of all stripes: Jazz player Bill Frisell drops by and plays a little surf guitar, Kirk Douglas from the hip hop band The Roots tries to emulate “guitar god” Jeff Beck, and, during the film, Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye, a Carmine Street Guitars regular, referring to the antique woods: “It’s like playing a piece of old New York.” (Thomas Mießgang)

Credits
  • Eszter Balint
  • Christine Bougie
  • Nels Cline
  • Len Blum
  • Becky Parsons
  • John M. Tran
  • Ted Rosnick
  • Robert Kennedy
  • Dallas Good
  • Travis Good
Sphinx Productions

The Match Factory

DCP
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