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On a Franciscan habit, the cowl is a large loose hood once used for carrying a few simple supplies. Think of St. Francis’ cowl as your shopping cart. We pray these films will help you in your journey to love God and others.
If you prefer a different option than the Franciscan Honor System, you can simply give us a call at (818) 563-1947 or print out our ORDER FORM and mail it in.
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As we neared the end of our 8th year of putting the power of film at the service of the poor, the San Damiano Foundation experienced an explosion of interest in our work from around the world. In 2008, we released our 13th film, The Fragrant Spirit of Life, which is set in Uganda. Shortly afterward, we posted a scene from the film on YouTube. The scene featured two small children, Sam and Esther, whom we found lying nearly naked in the dirt outside a remote village. They were starving and unable to move because they suffered from untreated polio. Read more...
Running Time: 121 MIN
© 2009 The San Damiano Foundation |
In 2003, I spent six months on the mean streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles and made the epic film Rescue Me, featuring the work of the Union Rescue Mission. I have long wanted to produce a highly condensed version of the film that would essentially consist of my personal reflections and some of the many memorable “street people” I came to love.
It is my hope that A Distressing Disguise will give people a more accessible look into the tortured world of the homeless in America. We can no longer ignore the homeless. We need to rescue them…and in doing so we will also rescue ourselves from our prisons of selfishness and indifference. Read more...
©2009, 103 MIN. |
When Did I See You Hungry Book and Film
St. Anthony Messenger Press has generously given us a crate-load of Gerry’s powerful and meditative photography book, which we are using to help raise much-needed funds to keep San Damiano afloat in these rough economic times. For a donation of $50, you will receive a signed copy of the book When Did I See You Hungry?, along with a copy of the film narrated by Martin Sheen. Read more... |
This 37-minute film, narrated by Martin Sheen, is a photographic meditation on the plight of the poor and our responsibility to help. Gerard Thomas Straub spent months living among the poor in the impoverished sections of 29 cities in nine nations: India, Brazil, Kenya, Jamaica, the Philippines, Mexico, Italy, Canada, and the US. The photographs, which document the life of the poorest of the poor, including a leper colony in Brazil, are taken from a startling and disquieting series of 250 intensely personal black-and-white photographs contained in Gerry's book, When Did I See You Hungry? Gerry uses the camera as an instrument of contemplation, and his photographs, with wordless gentleness, allow us to see more closely things we know about but are not attentive to. More than just capturing the agony of life in the slums, Gerry’s photographs reveal the hidden humanity of the poor, their spirit of joy, and their will to survive... read more
"A beautiful and wrenching meditation on the poor…comprised of Straub's 250 striking and very intimate black-and-white photographs and his compelling words."
-Helene Slesserav-Jamir, Sojourners Magazine
© 2002, 37 MIN.
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The war-torn nation of Uganda, located in sub-Saharan East Africa, amid lush landscapes, offering an almost Eden-like existence, is one of the saddest places on Earth. The AIDS pandemic, ethnic genocide, and the cruel violence of a brutal civil war have left countless children with nowhere to turn. They are tiny nomads, aimlessly wandering the streets, exposed to a host of dangers on every corner. Orphans and their frail grandparents are digging up roots to eat. Many children have their lives prematurely snuffed out by preventable diseases. Their childhood has become a cycle of fear and despair. Some 40,000 children in Uganda have been violently abducted to fight as child soldiers or forced to serve as laborers or domestic slaves…or worse, sex slaves. In this relentless march of suffering and death that tramples the people of Uganda, you will meet four amazing people who are bringing the light of hope into this dreadful darkness... read more
©2008,Disc One, 132 MIN, Disc Two, 138 MIN |
This is the long-anticipated follow up to one of our most popular films, Poverty and Prayer, which featured scenes from our first five films. Poverty and Prayer II includes the best of our four newest films: The Patients of a Saint, Room at the Inn, Where Love Is, and The Narrow Path. With these two films we have captured the breadth and essence of the ever-growing SDF library. Each act in this series divides into manageable scenes, each one a perfect teaching tool for small group, classroom or congregational settings... read more
©2007, 151 MIN.
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We talk about the "poor" but we hardly ever meet any poor people. In The Faces of Poverty you will meet actual poor people, learn their names, hear their tragic stories, see their sorrowful faces. You will see innocent children without homes, a neglected grandmother living in a mission, a young mother who lives in her car with her children, a homeless man living in an abandoned building and a homeless veteran with no legs... read more
©2007, 44 MIN.
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The Narrow Path is a bold, challenging and different film for filmmaker Gerry Straub and his San Damiano Foundation. Their motto is “Putting the Power of Film at the Service of the Poor.” But you will not see any images of extreme poverty, though the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after their destruction are graphic. The message and supporting visuals are focused on prophetic Christian call to be peacemakers in a nation whose policies are often in direct contrast with this biblical mandate. From his own hermitage in New Mexico as well as in his retreats and lectures and interview statements in the midst of his peace demonstrations, Father John Dear, SJ, presents and interprets the words and witness of the nonviolent Jesus in the midst of escalating violence around the world.... Read more
"Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm."
-Dorothy Day
©2007, 108 MIN.
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Where Love Is: The Story of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen tells the inspirational story of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which has been faithfully serving the poor of Detroit since 1929. A simple friar named Solanus Casey, whose saintly life of prayer and charity are legendary in Detroit, inspired the kitchen. In Where Love Is stories of faith from places of deep pain emerge like beams of light piercing through immense obstacles. In a city with the country's second highest unemployment rate, deep-seated poverty, and racial segregation, hope is still possible. The friars and volunteers love with sincerity through acts of kindness and provision, believing that where love is, there God is...read more
©2006, 90 MIN.
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Room at the Inn tells the inspirational story of the St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen located in the Kensington area of Philadelphia, a dark, brooding, depressed area where poverty, pain and drugs thrive. The Inn is operated by a community of Franciscan friars, sisters and lay people dedicated to living a life of service among the poor. Guests entering the Inn are served much more than a meal: they are shown the love and mercy of God. As a way of acknowledging their dignity as human beings and children of God, the poor are seated at tables and served a hot meal...read more
"In our encounters with the poor, we must move from pity to love, from charity to justice." -Gerry Straub, narration from Room at the Inn
©2006, 150 MIN.
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The Patients of a Saint is the story of an American doctor working in the high-tech world of a university hospital, who in 1983, felt compelled to abandon everything and enter the harsh world of extreme poverty and weakness in Peru. At first, Dr. Tony Lazzara worked in an adult clinic operated by Franciscan friars in Lima. Eventually his deeep concern for poverty’s children prompted him to open his own clinic and home geared for the needs of destitute and sick kids. Today, 50 kids live in this home – “Hogar de San Francisco de Asis” – suffering from an array of illnesses and deformities. Dr. Tony absorbs all the costs. All housing, food, education, medical treatment and medication are offered free while a child is under his care... read more
"I was a participant in the joy and the heartbreak, shedding tears along the way. Straub's gifted filmmaking allows us to see that God's grace can and does abound in a place of crippling poverty and debilitating disease." -Hena Cuevas, Life & Times, KCET-TV Los Angeles
©2005, 115 MIN.
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Endless Exodus is a film about migrants from Mexico and Central America who cross the border and the US without any documentation. But the film’s focus is not political or social; rather it looks at the problem through the lens of spirituality. The film captures the face and presence of Christ in the face and presence of the migrants, many of whom will die trying to cross the desert to get a job nobody really wants. During the last ten years, more than 3,000 migrants have died trying to cross the border between the US and Mexico. But it’s not just a film about empathizing with migrants who only want to survive. The film parallels our own spiritual journey through our own desert of doubts and confusions, as the migrants teach us about sacrifice, fearlessness, dedication, and faith in the face of grave circumstances...read more
"Endless Exodus is a remarkable piece of work. It gets under your skin…and doesn't easily get out." -Joe Ferullo, CBS Paramount Television
"As sad as the visuals are, the beauty that shines through the film is unforgettable." -Jay Ostrowski, Film Director
©2004, 130 MIN.
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This 57-minute film explores more deeply the contemplative dimension in Gerry Straub’s other films that focus more extensively on the suffering of the poor, the homeless, the lepers, and the migrant peoples of our world. Here he expands on the necessity of a deeply prayerful spirituality for confronting the evil of poverty and growing in solidarity with the poor; and how to develop such a spirituality. He draws on the wisdom of such contemplative instruments of God’s love as St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, and Thomas Keating, and challenges us to give ourselves away totally to God in service to others...read more
"With a beautifully rendered script that mediates the return of our noisy minds to a healing silence, Holy Pictures conveys images that recall us to what our lives could be - indeed must be in this hour of our spiritual peril - if only we relearn to pay attention."
-Jonathan Montaldo, Former Director of the Thomas Merton Center
"What an inspiring doorway to quiet reflection! The uplifting images in Holy Pictures…along with the soft-spoken inspired narration brought about an inner calmness in me."
-Sr. Ramona Miller, OSF, Franciscan School of Theology
©2003, 57 MIN.
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Divided into two parts, Rescue Me is a 3 hour and 20 minute documentary film on the horrific plight of the poor and homeless of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles and the heroic work of the Union Rescue Mission which offers them food, shelter and rehabilitation programs. The film presents a stark and unwelcomed look at the tragic lives of real people who are homeless. Yet amid the pain and suffering on full display on the mean streets of Skid Row, a nightmarish 50-blocl area in downtown Los Angeles where more than 10,000 people, including a shocking number of women and children, live in cardboard boxes or overcrowded missions, they find a place where love abounds standing ready to offer a helping hand and a way to a better life... read more
©2003, 204 MIN.
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This 32-minute film takes viewers to the depressing world of the poor and 45,000 persons with leprosy in the Amazon region of Brazil where we discover a compassion that is extraordinary. Through the eyes and words of filmmaker Gerry Straub and his host, former Michigan lawyer, Jim Flickinger, who created a multidimensional project called Amazon Relief, we encounter the poor who are Jesus in a distressing disguise. The port city of Manaus is plagued by a poverty so lethal it is choking people to death. Hidden in the dreadful slums are countless malnourished children, who constantly face profound hunger...
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"Embracing the Leper is wonderful. People who see it are instantly moved to help. For example, last month I received an envelope full of checks from various out-of-state donors. The result was a large collection for Amazon Relief." -Jim Flickinger, President, Amazon Relief
©2003, 32 MIN.
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This 89-minute film combines the most powerful scenes from his first five films – When Did I See You Hungry?, Embracing the Leper, Rescue Me, Endless Exodus, and Holy Pictures – and offers viewers a mosaic of images of poverty and the poor, reflection on how they have impacted him, and the necessity of a deeply prayerful spirituality for confronting the evil of poverty. The excerpt from When Did I See You Hungry?, narrated by Martin Sheen, is a photographic meditation on the plight of the poor in nine nations and our responsibility to help. Embracing the Leper reveals the depressing world of 45,000 persons with leprosy in the Amazon region of Brazil. Rescue Me presents the difficult life of 10,000 homeless persons on the streets of Los Angeles. The excerpt from Endless Exodus unveils the poverty and desperation of the poor in El Salvador that drives them to migrate to the US – “It’s go North or go hungry.” The excerpt from Holy Pictures describes the kind of spirituality that makes long-term solidarity with the poor possible...
read more
©2004, 89 MIN. |
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A Note about the Filmmaker, Gerry Straub
As the result of his life-changing encounter with the spirit of Francis of Assisi in 1995, Gerry Straub left a profitable and successful career as a producer of Hollywood soap operas for a radically different vocation. He spent months living with the poor all over the world, so that he could capture their faces and share their stories to all who would open their eyes, ears, and hearts to see, listen, and be converted. His radical conversion reveals the radical message and witness of Jesus. Gerry challenges us to join him in following this Jesus who is to be found in the lives of God’s special people, the poor and marginalized of this world. |
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