I thought I’d start the New Year by reminding you of the six people who Wulf and I have interviewed, and edited films for, to date. I decided to create a Theme Film Favourites series for which I have chosen three short film clips of each person taken from our Themes YouTube channel.
First, I’d like to introduce, or re-introduce, you to Huseyin Djemil, Founder of Towards Recovery. I first met Huseyin in 2006/7 at a recovery group meeting run by Kathy Gyngell at the Centre for Policy Studies. I was very impressed by him and what he had to say. At the time, Huseyin was London Area Drug Strategy Coordinator for HM Prison Services. I had no idea at first that he was in recovery from an addiction to Class A drugs.
Huseyin set up his own consultancy, Green Apple Consulting Ltd, and worked with a wide variety of organisations. His consultancy work gave him great insights into the addiction treatment system, as well as social care and criminal justice sectors.. He is now Head for New Hope Drug and Alcohol Service in Bracknell.
Huseyin Djemil talked to me in three interviews about Towards Recovery, the recovery community that he developed in Henley-on-Thames in 2012, as well as a wide variety of other matters. Links to our interviews and the resulting 26 main films (totalling two and a half hours) can be found on our People page. I also edited a variety of other films of Huseyin for our Stories and Themes sections. Here are three of my favourite Huseyin films taken from our Themes YouTube channel.
Spider Man & Batman
‘The real deal in recovery is being bitten by the spider, is having that internal transformation somehow, that makes you look at everything differently. And it changes you.’ [1′ 46″]
Kintsugi & Recovery
‘The concept is, if I transfer that to my recovery, I could try and fix the cracks in a way that they are not visible to anyone. But what I’ve chosen to do instead is to take the Kintsugi route and put my cracks on show.’ [2′ 18″]
The Lion Learns To Write
‘Until the lion learns to write, all the stories will be from the hunters’ perspective… I guess these videos, the blogs, and all of that is the lion learning to write.’ [0′ 55″]