STEPHEN 2023 Film Screening

A Recoverist Month event

Recoverist = recovery + activist

Artist Melanie Manchot’s first feature film, STEPHEN (2023), blurs the lines between fact and fiction to examine addiction and recovery.

Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, the film was created with a mixed cast of professional actors and people from the recovery community.

STEPHEN is based on the real-life story of Thomas Goudie, a clerk at the Bank of Liverpool, caught embezzling money to support his obsessive gambling.

For this project, Manchot has collaborated with Stephen Giddings who plays the lead role, drawing on his own experiences of addiction. Manchot first met Stephen in 2015 when working on the multi channel video installation TWELVE, commissioned by Portraits of Recovery.

This special preview screening will be followed by a Q&A. STEPHEN will be released in cinemas on Friday 13 October 2023.

Melanie Manchot is a visual artist who works with photography, film, video and installation as part of a performative and participatory practice.

She studied at Royal College of Art, City University, London and New York University. Notable solo exhibitions include Celebration (Cyprus Street), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; Moscow Girls und Andere Geschichten, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2006), Melanie Manchot, Cornerhouse, Manchester (2002) and Stories from Russia, The Photographers' Gallery, London (2005).