Carmine Street Guitars
Directed by Ron Mann
2018Documentary80 minCanadaPG
In a gentrified Greenwich Village, guitar maker Rick Kelly builds instruments from the bones of old New York, beloved by Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Patti Smith.
Synopsis
Once the centre of the New York bohemia, Greenwich Village is now home to lux restaurants, and buzzer door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche. But one shop in the heart of the Village remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars.
There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. Nothing looks or sounds quite like a Rick Kelly guitar, which is the reason they are embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, just to name a few.
Featuring a cast of prominent musicians and artists, the film captures five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars, while examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life.
The director
Ron Mann is one of Canada's foremost documentary filmmakers and the founder of Films We Like. Since Imagine the Sound (1981) he has chronicled North American pop culture in films including Comic Book Confidential, Grass, Altman and Carmine Street Guitars.
