This session will look at the power of documentary and photography film to convey the human face of hunger.  Acclaimed documentary photographer and filmmaker Gerry Straub discuss the potency of this medium to touch hearts, inspire people, and change lives.

Gerard Thomas Straub is a documentary filmmaker and an award-winning author of five books, including a novel.  Gerry has written and directed thirteen documentary films, three of which have aired on many PBS television stations, including We Have a Table for Four Ready, which tells the poignant story of a soup kitchen run by Franciscan friars in Philadelphia, and Room Enough for Joy, which tells the heartwarming story of L’Arche community founded in Tacoma, Washington by two Jesuit priests which serves the needs of twenty mentally disabled children and adults.

Mr. Straub also had a long and distinguished career as a network television producer in New York and Hollywood; he produced dramatic television series that have aired on CBS, NBC and ABC, including the wildly popular General Hospital.

Mr. Straub’s striking black & white photography has been exhibited in the art gallery attached to the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Kentucky, and also published in The New York Times and Sojourners magazine. He also taught a course on television writing and directing at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. He has lectured and shown his films at the University of Notre Dame, St. Bonaventure University, the University of Dayton, Loyola Marymount University, Canisius College, Mount Mercy College, Siena College, Wheaton College, Calvin College, Chestnut Hill College, Providence College and the Catholic Theological Union. In March of 2007, Gerry’s global poverty photographs were chosen to be exhibited at the prestigious Anaheim Religious Education Conference sponsored by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles which was attended by 40,000 people from across the nation.

Mr. Straub, who is a Secular Franciscan, is the founder and president of The San Damiano Foundation, which produces films that celebrate the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan concern for the poor, social justice, peace, non-violence, prayer and the integrity of creation. The San Damiano Foundation strives to put the power of film at the service of the poor.

The San Damiano Foundation has been written about in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, St. Petersburg Times, Providence Journal, U.S. Catholic, National Catholic Reporter (cover story), and Sojourners magazine, and has been featured in stories which have aired on Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (PBS), Life & Times (KCET-TV, the PBS station in Los Angeles), and News Conference (KNBC-TV News in Los Angeles), as well as on local television shows in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Tampa, Florida.In addition, stories about Gerry and The San Damiano Foundation have also been published by diocesan newspapers in Buffalo, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Providence, Brooklyn and Glasgow, Scotland.

Gerry Straub is a former member of the Board of Directors of Bread for the World, a Washington, DC based Christian lobbying organization that fights against hunger. Mr. Straub is also a former member of the Board of Regents of the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California. In September of 2003, The University of Dayton presented Mr. Straub with the Daniel J. Kane Religious Communications Award, an annual award given to a person who has made “an outstanding lifetime dedication to gospel values through various forms of Media.”  Mr. Straub lives in North Hollywood, California.