Cats of Mirikitani

[Aaron Gerow]

Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival, aiming to equal Sundance as the  
main venue for indie film in the USA (though not quite succeeding yet),  
held its awards ceremony last night. Only one Japanese film showed at  
the festival (Toyoda's Kuchu teien) and did not win an award, but one  
film with Japanese connections nabbed a couple of awards.

The Cats of Mirikitani, a documentary about a nikkei artist who became  
homeless, won the Audience Award and an honorable mention in the NY  
Loves Film Documentary category. Do note that the Audience Award is the  
only one that covers all 165 or so films in the festival and is based  
on average ratings by viewers of the film.

Mirikitani was directed by Linda Hattendorf and produced by Masa  
Yoshikawa. Some of you know Masa as a NY-based production manager who  
is a regular at festivals like Yamagata and Rotterdam and has attended  
the recent KineJapan events held near New York. The film, which is  
Linda's debut film as a director, was in production for over 5 years.  
I've only seen an initial cut, but my wife saw the finished version at  
Tribeca and whole-heartedly concurs with the results of the Audience  
Award (and she was a coordinator at Yamagata).

Congrats go out to Masa!

Here's the link to the Tribeca catalog intro to the film:

http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/tixSYS/2006/filmguide/ 
event_np_summary.php?EventNumber=2469

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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