The survival of ancient Southeast Asian culture is explored in Dancing Through Death: The Monkey, Magic & Madness of Cambodia. It is the story of Thavro Phim, a Cambodian dancer who came of age during the regime of Pol Pot (1975-1979) and lost his father, brother and grandfather to the genocide carried out by the bloody Khmer Rouge. Thavro’s dedication to Cambodian Classical dance and to his role as the magical white monkey kept him whole during the ordeal. A resident of the United States since 1993, Thavro returned to Cambodia in 1998 for a bittersweet reunion with his family and teachers. The film follows him on that journey.

The Boston Globe reviewer Karen Campbell viewed it as “a powerful and poignant new documentary…[which] explores how Cambodians in the United States and in their native land are attempting to rebuild their culture after the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into killing fields…It manages to engage, at one turn horrifying, at another uplifting.”