This year’s REEL Recovery Film Festival will be held from Oct. 27-30 in Los Angeles, with plans for a smaller-scale presentation Dec. 13-14 in Nashville, Tenn. Writers in Treatment co-founder Leonard Buschel says last year’s inaugural event, which featured weekly film showings at a rented Hollywood theater, attracted a number of clinicians as well as persons in recovery and non-recovering people.

Some treatment centers sent groups of clients to the screenings last year, and the event included some facilitated process group meetings afterwards. Buschel, a former publisher and addiction counselor who has been in recovery for 15 years, recalls his own emotional experience in early sobriety after he watched the film “Leaving Las Vegas” starring Nicolas Cage.

“I immediately went to a location where meetings were held and waited for the next meeting to start,” he says.

Buschel recalls that while he was aware of other efforts on behalf of specific professional groups, such as musicians, he had never heard of an effort to help writers. People in California often assume the nonprofit was created to assist screenwriters only, but it’s for anyone who derives at least one-quarter of total income from the written word.

Scholarships are available to individuals with or without health insurance. Applicants must agree to participate in a relapse prevention program along with the primary treatment they attend, and must submit—what else?—a written essay of up to 750 words about their addiction and treatment history.

“We’d like to get at least one person a month into treatment,” Buschel says.

Besides the film festival, Writers in Treatment also sponsors educational events featuring authors and field professionals. The group tries to be sensitive to the needs of writers, who like other artists often find it difficult to resume with their craft in early recovery, Buschel says.

For more information about the REEL Recovery Film Festival, visit www.writersintreatment.org. Writers in Treatment is seeking corporate sponsors for this fall’s event. In addition, film and video entries for possible screening at the festival are being accepted through midnight on Sept. 17.

Last year’s Festival was an outstanding success. Talent associated with the film or a   film historian introduced each screening with a scintillating presentation.  Psychologists facilitated a post-screening mini-process group with audience members. This year we will be screening original shorts, documentaries, music videos and features plus four New York bio-pic classics: POLLACK, BASQUIAT, BASKETBALL DIARIES and CIAO MANHATTAN.  We are soliciting submissions from the U.S. and abroad.

During last year’s eight-night festival Ben Stiller and writer Jerry Stahl presented Permanent Midnight for a 10^th Anniversary showing, and actor Danny Huston and U.K. director Bernard Rose discussed and screened their 2000 cult classic, IVANSXTC. Barfly co-star Roberta Bassin talked about working with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway while also caretaking Charles Bukowski during his frequent visits to the set.

This year’s REEL Recovery Film Festival is a four-day celebration of the arts, creativity and the prevention of life shattering addictions. Writers In Treatment will host several panels with well know writers and performers discussing how victory over alcoholism and substance abuse heightens and exhilarates one’s creativity and career.

The audience will be psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, chemical dependency counselors, men and women in recovery, members of the entertainment industry, media representatives and the general public. This is the social, cultural and networking recovery event of the year.

The Los Angeles festival is sponsored by Twin Town Treatment Centers and co-sponsored by, Recovery Now TV, Lee McCormick and MALIBU HORIZON. Other sponsors include: CRC Health Group, Newport Academy, Inland Valley Recovery Services, It’s Prefect Malibu, RecoveryView.com, and Recovery Road Productions. Submissions Other sponsors include: can be made directly through Recovery Road Productions. Contact Dustin Conrad 310-770-9309.

FINAL DEADLINE for entries is midnight September 17, 2010 For more information: Leonard Buschel 818-762-0461