Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATION 165becoming an export industry, making movies primarilyfor people who live outside the United States.Asia is Hollywood’s fastest growing regional market.Some analysts predict that within 20 years Asia could beresponsible for as much as 60 percent of Hollywood’sbox-office revenue. No wonder that the American filmindustry now sees the growing markets of Asia as itsnext great frontier. In the pursuit of the two billion-plusviewers of Asia, Hollywood is expanding its embraceto include actors from Hong Kong, scripts from SouthKorea or Japan and also production facilities in Chinaor Thailand. Perhaps nothing indicates globalizationas much as the growing ties between the Asian andAmerican film industries.However, is it only Hollywoodization that is happeningin Asia? How about an Asianization of films? We can,of course, ask questions about influences among filmcultures in Asia. Nowadays, as people travel betweencountries pretty much like they traveled between citiesin the old days, Asian people and Asian films also travel.As neighboring countries, ties between Asian countriesare supposed to be stronger than ties between Asiancountries and Hollywood. However, in the field ofcinema, is this the case?With this Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship, Iproposed a project to see how globalization works in thefield of cinema. I wanted to see globalization throughcinematic representations and cinematic experience inJapan and Thailand.JapanDuring my stay in Japan in October 2006, the 19 thTokyo International Film Festival was being held. Thisis one of the major, if not the most important, filmfestivals in Japan. This festival has a famous competitionsection where many international films compete to bethe best. However, already for three consecutive years,the programmer of this festival also holds a specialsection that is called “Japanese Eyes,” in which s/heselects and screens the best Japanese films producedeach year.What was really interesting for me was when, at theend of the festival, out of 13 films that were selected byYoshi Yatabe, the Japanese Eyes Programming Director,The Cats of Mirikitani was picked as the best film in thiscategory. This was not only interesting because The Catsof Mirikitani was the only documentary film shown inthe Japanese Eyes section that year, but also because ofthe production nature of this film.The Cats of Mirikitani can hardly be described as aJapanese film in a traditional sense of production. Thedirector of this documentary is Linda Hattendorf, anOhio-born New York film editor who has been workingin the New York documentary community for morethan a decade. This film is a directorial debut for her.Lucid Dreaming Inc., the company which produced thisfilm, is also not a Japanese company, but American.The subject of this film, Jimmy Mirikitani, can bedubbed as Japanese because his parents were Japanese.However, Mirikitani is not a Japanese citizen. He wasnot even born in Japan, but in Sacramento, America.Mirikitani is a Japanese-American. All of the events inthis documentary were shot and took place in America.The city of New York is the ultimate landscape of thisdocumentary.Jimmy Mirikitani was a street painter who was all of asudden noticed by Linda Hattendorf when she walkedin the freezing cold streets of Manhattan on the firstday of 2001. When Hattendorf saw him, Mirikitaniwas sleeping under many layers of clothing in front ofa grocery store. An intimate, yet strange relationshipbegan between Hattendorf and this 80-year old homelessman when she agreed to “buy” one of his drawings inexchange for taking a photograph of him, which wasthe payment he requested.Starting with that first encounter, Hattendorfdocumented their relationship with her video camera.The result, The Cats of Mirikitani, is no doubt a treasureof personal filmmaking. Slowly, in a very subtle way,The Cats brings in the fact that Jimmy Mirikitani is avery unique and special person. As quickly revealedby an examination of his art, Mirikitani was held in aJapanese internment camp during the Second WorldWar, as a part of the anti-Japanese campaign after theattack on Pearl Harbor.The strong message and relevance of Jimmy Mirikitani’sexperiences is thrown into shocking relief when, aboutnine months after Hattendorf began recording, theevents of 9/11 took place. That evening, Hattendorffound Mirikitani alone in the toxic cloud that had takenover lower Manhattan. Feeling worried, Hattendorfasked him to come home with her. Surprisingly,Mirikitani, who up to that point had refused virtuallyall assistance being offered to him, agreed.This film, which started with the awkward relationshipbetween Hattendorf and Mirikitani, develops a great,unspoken affection at this point. With Hattendorf’shelp, Mirikitani, who was very bitter about his life andAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows