BELFAST — The Colonial Theatre will be the next stop in the Recovery in Maine screening series from Points North Institute. The free event takes place Tuesday, June 30, at 6:30 p.m., and is in partnership with Points North and Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships.

Established in 2018, Points North’s Recovery in Maine program is a statewide series of documentary film screenings that spark public discussions about substance use disorder, the recovery process, and the public's collective response to the opioid epidemic.

The event will feature screenings of three short films: A Phantom Song, Recovery in Maine: Wabanaki Voices, and Compassion Cures: Building Hope by Overcoming Stigma, which are intended to spark a public discussion about substance use disorder, the recovery process, and the collective response to the opioid epidemic. 

Organizations that support those experiencing recovery and addiction will be in attendance, including VOA, Mainehealth, Options, CRCC, Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships and the Belfast EMS. 

Compassion Cures: Building Hope by Overcoming Stigma, created by Laura Morris and filmmaker Ben Morris, is a 30-minute film featuring the collective voices from medical experts, those in recovery, parents who have lost children to substance use, Narcan Specialists, clergy, law enforcement, and the Director of Opiate Response to help educate communities on the importance of treating Substance Use Disorder as a disease that deserves compassion and access to help. It has been screened at national and statewide conferences as well as numerous communities in Maine to foster conversations on how communities can be part of the solution.

The second film, Recovery in Maine: Wabanaki Voices, is also unrated with a runtime of 10 minutes, and centers on Wabanaki approaches to recovery, showing how community, song, language and tradition act as powerful forms of healing. It is the latest installment in the Recovery in Maine series, which is a partnership between Governor Janet Mills’ Office of Opioid Response and Points North Institute, home of the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF).

A Phantom Song (45 minutes) is a documentary film by The Forty Hour Club—a Maine-based theater organization and production company dedicated to creating original artist-driven independent theater that brings an authentic working-world perspective to the stage. Their art & advocacy project "Chasing The New White Whale—Harpooning Addiction” is a theatrical and performance “Arts Intervention” model that addresses the opioid crisis taking place in fishing and working communities. Working with community members in recovery and re-entry, the project serves as a creative tool for restorative justice, inclusion, connection, and healing.

A Phantom Song offers a window into The Forty Hour Club’s advocacy and theatrical work with members of the recovery and reentry community who participated in a blues/rock opera in a long-abandoned theater in Augusta, Maine.

"The film creates an inspiring chorus of faces and voices that are often unseen and unheard to confront the bias and resistance that can lead to the destructive power of stigma," said a news release.

A discussion will follow the film screenings, and the entire event is free and open to the public. 

The Colonial Theatre is owned and operated by Hawthorne Arts Collaborative, a nonprofit organization rooted in the preservation of the century-old theatre and its continued operation as a cinema and arts hub.