Eternity (Tee Rak) among films deemed not 'crap' at LA fest

Interesting post by Robert Koehler at his Film Journey blog, in which he writes about the line-up for the Los Angeles Film Festival.

He starts out:

A running conversation at film festivals in the US and abroad (mostly abroad): The urgency of film criticism to advocate for certain cinema, and ignore the other cinemas. The best reason? Life is too short to deal very much or very long with crap, and is much better spent considering the good work, and why it is good. Most American criticism is not founded on this principle; rather, it tends to be dominated by a consumerist mentality that says that all films which can be seen commercially should be written about, and those that can’t should be ignored.

And he goes on to bemoan the presence of Green Lantern in the festival and that shadowy group he refers to as "them" being "scandalized by Tim Burton’s jury choice of Uncle Boonmee for the Palme d’Or". Go read the rest.

At the end he offers a list of "high masterpieces to excellent" films that are worth watching at the LA fest. Somewhere in the middle is Eternity (Tee Rak, ที่รัก), the melancholy romance and family drama by indie filmmaker Sivaroj Kongsakul.

Eternity screens in the LA fest at 7.30pm on Thursday, June 23 (LA time) and again on Saturday.

Meanwhile, "Karn" Sivaroj is still doing his Cannes Residency in France, and you can catch up with him and the rest of the Pop Pictures crew at their blog.

(Via Peter Martin)