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By PATRICIA DONOVAN

Published: July 30, 2009

“We Need Food Not Bombs,” a documentary film about the local chapter of a decades-old international movement by UB graduate student Ron Douglas, has been programmed for national and international broadcast by Free Speech TV.

It is expected to begin airing within the next few months. When made public, the schedule will be posted on the Free Speech Web site.

The film explores the operations of the Buffalo chapter of the 30-year-old international movement “Food Not Bombs,” whose aims are to build community, end hunger and stop the globalization of the economy and restrictions to the movements of people, as well as end the exploitation and destruction of the earth.

The documentary has been screened in several Buffalo venues, including the city’s media arts center Squeaky Wheel and at the “World on Your Plate” conference at Daemen College in October 2008.

A Pittsburgh native, Douglas graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with degrees in cultural and religious studies. He is now a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in the UB Department of Media Study, where he works under the direction of acclaimed ethnographic filmmaker Sarah Elder.

Free Speech TV is a publicly supported, independent, nonprofit TV channel. A project of Public Communicators Inc., it is available 24 hours a day on DISH Network (channel 9415) and selected programs are available on 189 community access cable stations in 38 states.

Douglas is now working on two projects, both supported by Channels: Stories from the Niagara Frontier, a production program supported by Squeaky Wheel and the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo. The program matches documentary filmmakers with grassroots groups to facilitate the documentation of cultural and social movements that significantly impact the Buffalo region but are underreported by mainstream media.

In one case, Douglas is producing a video documentary about the Massachusetts Avenue Project’s urban, organic agricultural training program, “Growing Green,” which develops life-skills and provides meaningful work to low-income, at-risk youth in Buffalo.

In the second, he is producing a film with the Native American Community Services of Erie and Niagara County that will document the impact of the controversial Native American residential boarding schools that operated in Western New York from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, among them the Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indian Children (1855-1957) on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation.

Douglas is a performer as well, but always one with a social conscience. Earlier this week, he presented a performance video as part of the Buffalo Infringement Festival. In the video, called “Double Your Money, or How to Make It in Tough Economic Times,” he used live feed video to panhandle in two locations at once. “Who needs Paypal?” he asks.