thenationofartists.com

In 2001, at eighty years of age, Tsutomo Mirikitani could be found painting pictures of cats, internment camps, and more cats, behind a corner deli’s windbreaker in SoHo, New York.

Seemingly content to live on the street, Mirikitani’s world was visited by documentary filmmaker Linda Hattendorf, whose prior credits include work for documentary master Ken Burns, and Oscar-winning doc artist Barbara Kopple. Hattendorf lived a block away from the artist when she began filming his story, helping him to communicate with friends before the full story of the man was revealed to her.

Mirikitani is a survivor, pure and simple – WWII internment camps in the California desert, Hiroshima, 9/11, homelessness – each affront weathered by experiencing, continuing to create, and sometimes teaching, art.

Despite the hardships he’d endured and his financial situation, the artist accepted money only for his art and requested photos of artwork bought from him. His defiance of the tough life, and the exigencies for how he came to be rejected by his own countrymen would challenge any viewer to keep the artist at an emotional distance. Mirikitani's purity of artistic spirit lends little clues to a man now visible predominantly as sweet and old.

With little objectivity between the filmmaker and her subject to begin with, matters are complicated when, during the shoot,the event of 9/11 unfold, forcing the filmmaker to become Mirikitani’s caregiver. Hattendorf mainly remains off camera, but houses the "Grand Master Artist" (as he refers to himself) in her cramped apartment, helping him track down friends, family and acquaintances. By trying to help set him up with social security, albeit against his wishes, the director turns Mirikitani's world back upside-down, or perhaps right side up.

That Mirikitani has experienced a full life is not to be forsaken, and a myriad of chance encounters with other artists, including cooking Japanese cuisine for Jackson Pollock (who, as fate would have it, was amember of a Japanese fishing club in East Hampton). Upon being asked about Pollock, Mirikitani states simply, “he crazy.”

Although "The Cats of Mirikitani" is not a novel documentary, neither does it need to be. With a huge heart at its center, and a great story of human endeavor supporting its limbs, this tale told through an open lens is simply the best way to tell this story. An audience award winner at the Tribeca Film Festival, the film has picked up innumerable accolades during its festival life, and is available on DVD from New Video’s Arthouse Films, from Microcinema DVD, or via the "watch instantly" feature on Netflix.