Asian Film Festival of Dallas 2008

At a raucous soul R&B nightclub in 1963, crowds from all over Seattle gather for a chance at alcohol, wild music, and easy money. Amidst it all, a gambling bookie risks everything he has for a waitress down on her luck.

Palden Gyatso, a Buddhist monk since childhood, was arrested by the Chinese Communist Army in 1959. He spent the next 33 years in prison for the "crimes" of peaceful demonstration and refusal to denounce his apolitical teacher as an Indian spy. He was tortured, starved and sentenced to hard labor. He watched his nation and culture destroyed, his teachers, friends and family displaced, jailed or killed under Chinese occupation. Fire Under the Snow reaches back to Palden's birth in 1933 and follows him through the Orwellian nightmare that began with the Chinese invasion.