I was really torn on this - perhaps it should have gone on our Bollywood fu thread.

The attack of the killer bee
Founder of Milwaukie martial arts studio helps Nepal go Hollywood
By Matthew Graham
The Clackamas Review, Oct 28, 2008, Updated 2.7 hours ago

Shuny Bee, founder of Bee Martial Arts Academy, shows reporter Matthew Graham some of the finer points of martial arts.

More than two decades ago, Nepal native Shuny Bee was working as a teenage actor in Bombay, India, doing commercials and TV shows, hoping for Bollywood stardom. A friend of his traveled from Nepal to enlist his help in rescuing two girls who had been brought to Bombay and sold into prostitution.

Bee and his friend risked their lives to take on a monolithic crime syndicate to free the girls and return them to Nepal.

Now 39 years old, Bee has written and stars in a film about the incident, “Gorkha Rakshyak” or “The Gorkha Protector,” which premieres in Portland on Saturday, Nov. 1, at the Hollywood Theatre. Gorkha is another name for the people of Nepal, which is where the movie was filmed and produced.

In the film, a fictional work based on the actual events, Bee’s character has spent his life in a Buddhist monastery meditating and training his body, mind and spirit. He experiences enlightenment in the form of a new concept of martial arts, which he calls Bajra. (“Bajra” is a Sanskrit word meaning “thunderbolt.”)

Upon leaving the monastery he encounters a world of gang violence and drugs, which he dedicates his life to fighting.

The film also stars Oregonian Robert Madrigal, 38, who has trained with Bee for about 10 years. In the film, Madrigal plays a student learning the philosophy and principles of the Bajra technique.

Bee operates Bee Martial Arts Academy on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard in Milwaukie and spent 12 years developing the unique fighting style showcased in the film.

“Bajra martial art is more economic, direct, more strictly for survival,” Bee said. “You disable the opponent, and you get out. I studied a lot about the body and the pressure points. You don’t need to be a really powerful man to injure the eyes, just a little finger jab; the opponent is blinking their eyes, you escape. Same with the groin.”

The 39-year-old martial arts master holds a sixth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He wrote a book on how to use nunchaku, a martial arts weapon, and produced a DVD tutorial based on it.

Following the recognition he received demonstrating the Bajra method in Long Beach, Calif. in 2005, Bee was encouraged to finish writing the script he’d been working on for years.

“I was doing the Black Belt magazine festival, which is like the Oscars night for us martial artists,” he explains. “I did a demonstration in front of Bruce Lee’s wife and a lot of big celebrities, and they really admired my performance. And after that, Black Belt magazine wrote about me, ‘He’s amazing.’”

Akash Adhikari directed the film, which Bee hopes will bring further recognition to his martial arts style as well as to Nepal.

“This is definitive for me and all the Nepalese people, this is pride,” Bee says “I’m getting many e-mails from all over the world. This is a big thing for the Nepalese people.”

World premiere of “Gorkha Rakshyak” or “The Gorkha Protector,” 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, Hollywood Theatre, 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215, $12.

For more information or to watch the trailer, visit www.beemartialarts.com