It’s an honor to meet artist Jimmy Mirikitani & filmmaker Linda Hattendorf

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jimmy mirikitani-linda hattendorf cats of mirikitani

IN 2001, New York filmmaker Linda Hattendorf began documenting the life of a homeless artist whose work caught her attention. The elderly man, who set up his “shop” outside a corner grocery in SoHo, not far from the Wall Street district, wouldn’t take money from passersby, unless it was in payment for one of his drawings or paintings, many of cats and tigers. Hattendorf shot closeups of the arist working with dirt-covered hands on his often playful images. For months, Hattendorf walked by the old man’s spot — she lived nearby — and engaged the artist.

She found if she had her camera, he would open up and tell stories.

Then 9/11 happened.

Amidst the suddenly gray, ashen desolation of lower Manhattan, Hattendorf found the old man in his usual spot, and made a decision that would change both their lives. She decided to give him shelter, and took him home to live in her cramped apartment. Over the months when she helped him reconnect with society, she discovered the old man’s incredible story.

The documentary she produced, “The Cats of Miriktani,” is an amazing chronicle of a life journey for both Tsutomu “Jimmy” Mirikitani and Hattendorf.
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V there or be square: V3con update — panelists, schedules, Early Bird price ends tomorrow!

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Jane Lui -- performing at V3con

Jane Lui will be performing at the Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony for V3con.

We’re deep in the planning process for V3, the Asian American Digital Media Conference, scheduled for Aug. 25 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles with an Opening Night Reception and Awards ceremony on Friday, Aug. 24 at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. Most of the panelists are set and confirmed. We’re lining up performers like Jane Lui (shown here) to take the stage at the Opening Night soiree.

If you’re Asian American, a blogger, a social media maven, a journalist or just a fan of artists like Lui or David Choi or Clara C, or a reader of bloggers like Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man, Jen Wang of Disgrasian or Jeff Yang of the Wall Street Journal, you won’t want to miss this ultra-cool event.

They’ll all be there. Or V there. So don’t be square.

And, the low Early Bird price is only available through tomorrow, so register today and you can feel good about being oh-so-Asian frugal. If you’re a slacker Asian (like me), the pre-registration price ain’t so bad, only $10 more. If you’re traveling from outside SoCal, we’ve arranged for pretty good rates at the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo, just half a block from JANM and across the street from a row of ramen shops. Yowsa!
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A national town hall to mark the 30th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s death

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"Vincent Who" is a documentary about the death of Vincent Chin

Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 30 years ago on June 19 in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later.

At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for a Denver newspaper. I didn’t follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a “banana” — yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2009 documentary film about the impact of Chin’s murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, “Vincent who?”

Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind.

In the decades since his death, I’ve become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I’ve also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community.

Chin’s death still resonates three decades later, like the murder of Emmett Till resonates within the African American community as one of the driving forces of the civil rights movement. The 14-year-old Till was murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.
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Marion Barry keeps digging a deeper hole with racially insensitive remarks

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DC's "Mayor-for-Life" Marion Barry

Marion Barry is the elected councilman for Washington DC’s 8th Ward, but he’s more commonly referred to in the District as “Mayor for Life.” That’s because the man seemingly has nine lives, politically speaking.

He’s now embroiled in a controversy over anti-Asian remarks he made a couple of months ago, but an attempt to mend fences with a community meeting today added some more fuel to the fire when he called Polish people “Polacks” — which is tantamount to calling Asians the “C-word” and African Americans, uh, you know, the “N-word.”

Barry’s no stranger to controversy as a politician.
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9th grade filmmaker wins national award for “The Constitution and the Camps,” documentary about Japanese American internment

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Pretty powerful stuff. Matthew Shimura, a 9th grader from Honolulu, Hawaii won the Grand Prize for his documentary, “The Constitution and the Camps,” in C-SPAN’s annual StudentCam competition. The Grand Prize winner (announced March 7) received a $5,000 award and $1,000 for his teacher to buy video equipment for his school. (Coincidentally, he attends the Punahou in Oahu, where Barack Obama went to school.)

The contest chooses themes each year to get students to think about issues affecting the country. This year the topic was “The Constitution and You: Select any provision of the U.S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why it’s important to you.”

Shimura chose to focus his documentary on Japanese American internment camps because his uncle was imprisoned during World War II. The StudentCam website has more information and a list of all the winners (and links to every video in each category).

Here’s also a link to a cool interview with Shimura and Sen. Daniel Inouye on C-SPAN.

Congrats to Shimura for winning the competition, and for the great hard work he did to produce the video. Nice job!