Rick Ray - Be Safe: Stories from Ukraine

Award-winning cinematographer, writer, editor, and director Rick Ray has traveled the world to capture images of peoples and cultures and returns to the College Endowment Association with Stories from Ukraine. He has produced numerous documentary films including the award winning 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama, the highly regarded The Soul of India, Raise the Bamboo Curtain with Martin Sheen, and on regions as diverse as Syria, Namibia, Borneo, Lebanon, Iceland, Israel, Bali and more.

Rick Ray is the founder and president of the web-based stock footage companies DVarchive.com and RetroFootage.org, and is a frequent lecturer at performing arts centers, universities, and other venues across the United States. Rick Ray shoots and provides A+B roll and stock footage for movies, tv, commercial, and non-commercial ventures. Rick has produced numerous documentaries and is a regular lecturer on the travel film circuit.

The film Be Safe: Stories from Ukraine features in-depth interviews with a range of Ukrainian citizens including neighbors, children, soldiers, and priests. Told in their own words, they relay the shock of going from regular daily life to living amidst a brutal and relentless Russian campaign designed to terrorize and destroy their way of life.

Outraged by the images coming out of Ukraine, California-based filmmaker Rick Ray traveled to Ukraine to help document first-hand accounts as told by Ukrainian citizens. These individual narratives now form a mosaic of the struggles of ordinary people in Ukraine as they stand against Russian aggression. The hope is that in sharing these stories with a wide audience, the film will help broaden awareness of the war and maintain support for the people of Ukraine.