http://funkaoshi.com/category/Hotdocs-2008/

Betrayal (Nerakhoon)

The best film I saw at Hotdocs this year was, by far, Betrayal (Nerakhoon), by Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath. The film is narrated by Thavisouk, and the focus of the movie is primarily on him and his mother. The entire film is beautifully shot. Kuras is a cinematographer by trade, so this is probably to be expected. This film is her directorial debut. There is so much going on in this film, it was incredible.
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And then the story moves forward and you find yourself watching a movie about the immigrant experience. I knew the film was going to be awesome when we are shown a scene of a younger Thavisouk showing off his long hair and tattoos. Text on the screen informs us we’re watching footage from Brooklyn, 1985. Kuras looks to have been following this family’s life for over 20 years! I can only imagine how much film they had to wade through to make the movie they ended up with. The narrative they’ve managed to put together works so well. The movie covers a lot of ground, but never feels disjoint. Thavisouk seems to find his bearings in the US, but his brothers and sisters end up rebelling quite hard.

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I don’t think I’ve been at a film where you can hear so many people crying. It’s a bit unsettling when you can hear grown-@$$ men sniffling behind you. Betrayal was a brilliant film.

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http://www.zoom-in.com/sundance/spotlights...on_the_betrayal

Where is Hotdocs?

I have no idea.

But you can find out more about the screenings of Nerakhoon at the following link http://www.thebetrayalmovie.com/

"Betrayal (Nerakhoon)"
sad story!
hope our people there are doing much better now.

Yeah it's real sad. From the time they arrived in the U.S. to watching one's younger brother lose his life over gang violence. It's like watching our whole life story unfold over the course of 20 something years. And it's all captured on film. Our people had to go through a lot of pain and suffering to get to where we're at in the present moment.

Pour out a little liquor for the homies that are gone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBons6TRxic

They're our family friend!

BK is in the mudafawking building ya heard!!!!

How come they don't feature this in the Asian Film Festival? It's really stupid if they leave this gem of a film out!

Yeah, it sucks. They had a screening of Nerakhoon in Northern California(Fresno to be exact). If only I knew ahead of time, I'd travel from Southern California to Northern California just to watch it.

From what I understand, Nerakhoon is our very first documentry. I think it really did justice capturing the Lao diaspora, especially in the United States.

I never knew there were khon lao in Bk, New York. apparently since the 80s.

I understand Fresno, but I mean in Northern California, the Asian Journalism/Film Association are always trying to rep their cause to everyone in the business; but they fail. What's fuked up is that they feature trivial films every year that either deals with something like: living life as a homosexual Filippino or about Japanese/Korean historical warfare.
Every year there is this International Asian/Asian American Film Festival in San Francisco, it last about 2 weeks. The only deep film I remember in that film festival the last time I went had only ONE genuine heartfelt documentary about some formal Cambodian Gang members who had to be deported even though they were reformed men and they payed time for their crimes as youths.

And yet they feature crappy gay @$$ films like "Colma The Musical" about these stupid Filippinos singing and having a good time in a small town called Colma. That's why everyone has to go underground or defy copy right laws in order to reach the good stuff that hardly ever gets a chance to be seen.

^yeah there's lots of Khon Lao in New York, particularly Buffalo. Even in Pennsylvania...like Philadelphia or Allen Town.

and where do you live ?

Why you not answer first? I live in two states, one of them I live in more than half the year and the other I don't.

I'm back and forward between Viking and Painam.

Another Review of Nerakhoon
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http://www.filmjunk.com/2008/05/07/2008-ho...estival-report/

Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)
Dir: Ellen Kuras



"Certainly the most grim and serious of the documentaries I saw at Hot Docs, The Betrayal is the story of an immigrant family from Laos who flee to New York without their father in the years following the Vietnam War, only to find it an almost equally cruel and uninviting place. Ellen Kuras met co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath over 20 years ago when she took an interest in learning to speak Lao, and at the time began shooting footage of his family, not really knowing what kind of story she wanted to tell. What she ends up delivering is a moving portrait of a displaced family and their struggle to not only survive but also to maintain their humanity and their relationships with each other.

Kuras is known for being the cinematographer on films like Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam and Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol, and she employs a lot of interesting visual techniques to create an artistic documentary that is both expressive and powerful. The end of the film may be one of the most teary-eyed moments I can recall in a theatre ever, and the series of events that occur will leave you in disbelief that not only did this all actually happen to Thavi and his family, but that it was captured on film as well. This is the kind of documentary that should win Academy Awards, and I only hope it gets the distribution it needs to reach a wider audience."

There are a lot of Khon Lao in BK, I heard some are in BX but most moved to upstate..

That's cool. I didn't know that. Most of our people are concentrated on the West Coast. So its real cool to see and hear about our people living in different parts of the U.S. I should take a trip out to there one these days. Always wanted to check out New York.