The Cats of Mirikitani

The Cats of Mirikitani began as a modest documentary about a homeless New York City artist, but metamorphosed during production into something quite different, owing to some tragic serendipity. In the opening scenes, we see artist/filmmaker Linda Hattendorf becoming fascinated with an eccentric, octogenarian Japanese-American artist named Jimmy Mirikitani, who makes a few dollars drawing pictures of cats and lives near the filmmaker's Greenwich Village apartment close to Washington Square Park. Mirikitani turns out to be a suitably offbeat subject for a shot-on-video documentary in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and Hattendorf invites him to sleep in her apartment temporarily. While watching TV and absorbing reports of violence against Arab-Americans, Jimmy reveals that during World War II he was a prisoner in a California internment camp, a revelation that brings up long-suppressed, traumatic memories, turning Hattendorf's tribute to a quirky survivor into something else entirely, as the filmmaker expands on Mirikitani's reminiscences and sets them against the backdrop of present-day ethnic and religious paranoia directed at Muslims. Although filled out rather crudely with newsreel footage and grainy photographs, The Cats of Mirikitani resonates despite its threadbare production values. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (E. Hulse)