Tuesday,
May 5 at 7pm
Scribe
Video Center Producers’
Forum
The
Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
dir.
Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, US, 2008, video, 96 mins,
English and Lao w/ English subtitles
Co-director
Thavisouk Phrasavath in person
Twenty-three
years in the making, famed cinematographer-turned-director Ellen
Kuras, along with co-director and narrator Thavisouk Phrasavath,
document this extraordinary saga of a family torn apart by the
nasty "secret war" financed by the CIA in Laos during
the Vietnam era. Thavi, one of ten children born to a high ranking
US-backed military father, tells us of the horrifying consequences
of the sudden US abandonment of the Laotians who believed in
the American mission. Exquisitely photographed and enhanced
by a haunting score, The Betrayal is an extraordinary
meditation on both the obscenity of war and the many "betrayals"
stemming from it.
“The
subjects addressed in The Betrayal could hardly be
more enormous: war, revolution, the abandonment of a nation
and the scattering of its citizens. But the film, though it
includes old news clips of the war in Laos and of American presidents
discussing that country’s fate, is distinguished by an intimate
mood and a lyrical tone. It is quiet, contemplative and impressionistic,
which makes the story it has to tell all the more powerful.”
AO Scott, The New York Times
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