3rd Annual REEL Recovery Film Festival
Vancouver 2013
presented by Orchard Recovery Center

Vancouver, BC Edition
May – September 2013
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 W Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 1H4, Canada

REEL Recovery Film Festival ~ Vancouver Past Event

Vancouver hosted the first international edition of the REEL Recovery Film Festival on Oct. 21-23. The Orchard Recovery Center brought this three-day event to Vancouver’s notorious Eastside at the perfect venue,District 319. Mayor Gregor Robertson hosted opening night, giving a sincere welcome to addicts (both in and out of recovery), counselors, doctors, healing professionals and all the other festival attendees.
Al Arsenault, police officer and director of “Tears for April,” spoke about the remarkable lives and stories of the denizens of Vancouver’s Eastside that his film so sympathetically portrays.
Director Dena Ashbaugh talked about her brilliant film on eating disorders, “No Numbers.” The finale was a screening of the Canadian classic, “The Honour of All,”the extraordinary story of the Alkali Lake tribe and how its community went from an alcoholism rate of nearly100% to a sobriety rate of more than 75% today. Patrick Haggerson and the Esketemic First Nation members did a drum ceremony on the street outside the theater.
Audience members and local residents were transported to a place beyond words, beyond addiction and beyond suffering by the transcendental beats of the tribal drums as the sun set over the beautiful city of Vancouver, Bringing the ceremony to a warm close.