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The Filmmaker | Letter from The Filmmaker

Photo by: Jayd Gardina Ngawang Choephel is the director, writer, and producer of Tibet in Song, his feature debut. He is a graduate of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, India and a musician who released his first album of Tibetan folk songs entitled "Melody in Exile," in 1993.

After starting his career as a music teacher in India, he traveled to the US as a Fulbright scholar at Middlebury College, VT where he studied international music as well as filmmaking. He went to Tibet in 1995 to record and videotape Tibetan folk songs in order to make this film.

Chinese authorities arrested Ngawang in 1995, falsely charging him with espionage. He was sent to prison without a trial, where he served 7 years of an 18-year sentence. A highly publicized international campaign that began with his mother's solitary protests, and later involved musicians like Annie Lennox, the Tibetan Freedom Concert and US Senators James Jeffords and Patrick Leahy from Vermont, finally secured his release in 2002.

Ngawang is recipient of Middlebury College's Honorary Doctor of Arts degree, Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Lobsang Wangyal's Best Act in Exile award. He is also a Sundance Institute Fellow.

Letter from the filmmaker