Winner of the Audience Award at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, this refreshingly
organic documentary came about after the filmmaker made the acquaintance
of an 80-year-old Japanese-American street artist working (and living) near
her SoHo apartment during the summer of 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, Hattendorf
invited the quirkily charming Jimmy Mirikitani into her small apartment
to escape the toxic air. Only then did Jimmy's story of his time in an internment
camp during WWII emerge as well as the fact that the family he left behind
in Japan lived in Hiroshima and was decimated when the atomic bomb was dropped.
Throughout his life, though, Mirikitani has remained a dedicated artist,
drawing wide-eyed cats that at one point cheered a young child in the internment
camp, and painting landscapes of the internment camp itself, forever reliving
his painful past. As Hattendorf learns more and more about her boarder,
she begins to tackle his problems one by one: contacting long-lost relatives,
investigating his social security benefits and more, ultimately finding
housing for him. "Cats is many things: a film diary of
an odd-couple relationship, a profile of a forgotten man who slowly reconstructs
his past, and the transcendently moving account of a man on the margins
who gets reintegrated into society." (Philadelphia Inquirer) A
truly remarkable film. 35mm.
more
at thecatsofmirikitani.com
2006, color, 1 hour 14 minutes, USA