This past weekend I watched a documentary (I love the mfa) called "The Cats of Mirikitani". It is the story of a woman befriends a homeless guy Jimmy Mirikitani in 2000. He is 80 and offers to give her a drawing of a cat and in return he just asks for a photograph. He is a "grand master" and loves art. He is NOT a commerical artist. They become friendly as she always comes by to his "home" outside of a small Market near Washington Square in NYC. (The kindly owner is Korean and allows him to sleep there). This film documents their friendship and after 2001 in NYC, the filmmaker takes Jimmy in as the ashes and streets are not safe for anyone to sleep outdoors.
Through time and they year they live together, she learns much about him. His feelings about the WWII, being interned at Lake Tule for 3.5 years and how he got to be homeless. I appreciated the path of how the filmmaker works hard to get Jimmy established and works with social agencies, the government to help him out.
This won the Tribeca Film Festival Audience award and I can understand why. It was moving and simple. But very powerful in Jimmy's own words and his thoughts.
The Cats of Mirikitani by Linda Hattendorf (2006, 76 min.). “Make art, not war” is Jimmy Mirikitani's motto. This eighty-five-year-old Japanese American artist was born in Sacramento and raised in Hiroshima, but by 2001, lives on the streets of New York with the twin towers of the World Trade Center anchoring the horizon behind him. What begins as a simple vérité portrait of one homeless man becomes a rare document of daily life in New York in the months leading up to September 11. This is the story of losing “home” on many levels. “A profoundly gripping film, with a cumulative impact that may well wipe you out” (New York Magazine). Director and star present on August 23, 2007 (www.mfa.org)
http://www.thecatsofmirikitani.com/
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