Blue Collar & Buddha 1987

Directed by Taggart Siegel

This dramatic documentary explores America’s most recent refugees, struggling against the mounting tension of a post-Viet Nam era filled with guilt and anger. A group of Laotian refugees have built a Buddhist temple on a small farmstead on the outskirts of a resolutely blue-collar town in Illinois. Their efforts to preserve their culture and religious heritage have been greeted by several terrorist attacks on their temple.