Melanie Manchot’s first feature film is STEPHEN, out on general release now

STEPHEN, the remarkable new film from Melanie Manchot is on general UK release now. Starring Stephen Giddings as an actor auditioning to play himself, this film features 20 individuals in addiction recovery who actively contributed to its development, storytelling, and production. Melanie Manchot first met Stephen Giddings when she was commissioned by Portraits of Recovery to make the multi-channel video installation work Twelve which toured nationally in 2015. In between a national tour of Q+As to promote STEPHEN, leon clowes caught up with Melanie following the film’s premiere at the Barbican Centre, London.

leon: At the Barbican Q+A, you spoke of how, in ‘STEPHEN’, you weave together three forms of filmmaking: fiction, documentary and archive. How did that approach evolve in the making of the film?

Melanie: I met Stephen Giddings through a previous project called ‘Twelve’, instigated by Mark Prest from Portraits of Recovery. For this project I worked with 12 people in early recovery from long-term addiction.

During the early stages of working on Twelve, whenever the camera turned on and Ste was in front of it this charismatic presence emerged, a different version of Ste Giddings, with huge screen presence, if not to say magnetic. Shortly after, Ste was enrolled in drama school and the dream of acting had started to germinate.

Ste Giddings plays, and is, STEPHEN in the film

However, two years after Twelve had been exhibited, Stephen started to shy away from pursuing his dream, even though he still proclaimed his desire to show what he’s got to give. It was during one of our conversations around that time, that I said to him that I would write a film that would create a platform for him and give him the space to act.

Quite often in my practice in general, the work is based around people as well as ideas on exploring our place in the world. Research into locational and relational ways to think about our constantly evolving identities is key to many of my works. In STEPHEN, the location of the film is significant as it acts almost as a character, i.e. Liverpool is more than simply a place to film – I would actually say that the film is also a portrait of Liverpool. The city has a rich history of film, the first to be shot there being 1901’s The Arrest of Goudie. This was a reconstruction of the real-life arrest of Thomas Goudie who had embezzled £170,000 from the Bank of Liverpool – the equivalent of £22 million in today’s money.

A little bit of research showed quickly that Thomas Goudie was in fact an addict and he had lost enormous amounts of money to gambling, con men and Ponzi schemes. He became embroiled in more and more criminal activity to feed into and finance his gambling addiction. When I came across this film, it was one of those incredible moments. I was working with someone who has a history of addictions stretching back generations in his family, and the first ever film in Liverpool where Stephen is from and has lived all his life, is about addiction. The idea arose to bring this together and task Stephen with his considerable talent to use his own lived experience of substance misuse and alcohol addictions to inhabit this historic character Thomas Goudie, a gambling addict.

So, then we had archive, and the idea of a fictional story, but Stephen also has amazing life experience and he’s a great storyteller. His life has been shaped by various forms of addiction in himself and in others. That has given a bracket to a lot of the decisions in his earlier life. I didn’t want it to be just a fiction story, so embedding it within the real experience of real people was very important from the beginning. This is why we have this archival material, the idea of writing a fiction that is a reconstruction of a reconstruction, but then also the real life of people.

Pretty much everybody in the film has a background in addiction and recovery. There’s four professional actors and a group of 20 people who are from the recovery network in the wider Liverpool area, but even the professional actors have experience of either mental health issues, addiction itself or neurodiversity. Lived experience is very much at the centre of the film.

leon: The film gave me an uncomfortable, but important, reason to self-reflect. It made me consider why in my head, I was prying about what Stephen’s addiction was. Given the hybrid nature of the film’s storytelling, I was wondering if Stephen’s addiction is gambling, or that’s the story he’s playing in the 1990s update of Thomas Goudie’s story. The documentary footage of the recovery room discussions blurred that line for me as there was also discussion about alcohol and drug addictions. Was there an intentional ambiguity to the film’s narrative, and if there was, were there reasons behind this?

Melanie: That’s a brilliant question and an important one. In a sense, there are multiple answers to it. One side of the answer is that gambling addiction, compared to other addictions, is still so much less understood and possibly taken less seriously. People often consider those with a passion or an obsession with gambling to be doing something entirely different to people who might have substance addictions. That’s partly because their physical appearance doesn’t necessarily change. Their body seems intact, they’re not inebriated, they don’t slur their words, they’re not visibly changing. It is not having a major impact on their outward appearance, but it does impact internally, both on all their relationships as well as chemically, in their brains, their minds, their emotions. It is not so dissimilar to other addictions. I think the term addiction has for quite a long time been defined very narrowly.

Gambling and gaming addictions are the fastest rising addictions, not just in the UK, but internationally. I think the danger is so underestimated and misunderstood. Often it leads to suicide. It leads to devastation across multiple people as addictions often do. What was interesting was when I brought the story to the group that I was working with and explained that we’d be working with this notion of, and the real character of, a gambling addict, initially, a lot of people in the group thought that gambling addiction was something entirely different. By the end of the production, they completely changed their minds and felt that gambling addiction is the same as any other form of addiction.

In another part of the production process, we held a round table discussion, and Stephen quite pointedly said, “I could be addicted to anything. It doesn’t have to be alcohol. It could be anything and gambling is no different.” Then there was a discussion that people had around this idea that gambling isn’t taken seriously enough. So, the blurring of the lines is important for a number of reasons.

It’s important to shine a light on the fastest rising addiction in the UK and internationally and to campaign for it to be taken more seriously. In the UK there are now numerous gambling clinics open for adults and children who are suffering. That’s significant. Whereas in Scotland, for example, there’s no provision for gambling, so it’s also different in different countries. As much as the film is trying to find a new language around addiction and recovery and campaign for a de-stigmatization of addiction, it also aims to campaign for the recognition of gambling as a serious problem.

The other part of the reason why the blurring of the different languages of the film – archive, documentary, fiction – is important, why the film works across different genres is precisely to undermine the separation of different kinds of addiction. The film actively tries to speak in multiple voices. It seeks to embody an idea of multiplicity, and not to say that there is a linear kind of throughline that will tell the story from A to B – and then you understand it. The blurring and putting people into an uncomfortable position, asking them to think on their feet, is important because addictions are seriously complex, and they’re not easily understood.

It’s one of those cliches when people talk about ‘addicts’ and ‘addiction’ as being something that’s out ‘there’. It doesn’t concern them – it’s other people, and why don’t they just stop? If they’re gambling, if it’s a problem, why don’t they just stop? If it was as easy as that, it wouldn’t be called an addiction. So, the blurring and the keeping people on their toes, having to think about what these people are going through, whether it is an obsession with playing a fruit machine, a poker game, having a drink, or any other form of compulsion that they are subject to. It’s important that people empathise with all these different forms of addiction.

leon: There’s a real tenderness to the film. It’s refreshing to see an individual’s story, and the stories of multiple people in addiction recovery who we see throughout the film, told with compassion. In what ways did you ensure this atmosphere of care and sensitivity was foregrounded in realising the film?

Melanie: One thing that’s incredibly important when working with real people, and working with people who are vulnerable, is having a lot of time and making sure that this time is spent in building a system of care and of trust and respect. When we started working on STEPHEN, I already knew Stephen Giddings from 2013, and then I met this group of 20 people in 2019. We didn’t film until 2021. We had a long time working together through workshops that were entirely private. That ensured that people would become as comfortable as possible with the processes of filmmaking, and they would also be learning the tools of filmmaking themselves.

What I always do first is run workshops where the apparatus of filmmaking and the modes of production are being put in the hands of those who will then become part of the work. We had multiple cameras and made small groups in which people would film each other. They would be given tasks that taught them not just how the cameras and the equipment work, but also how to be, and exist, in front of the camera. Then we would make a lot of work together. We also watched a lot of movies together that had relevance to the work that we were doing, so that we could form a joint language. When we came to the actual production, and I referred to something, we all then knew what I was referring to.

There’s no sort of hierarchy. We’re all in this together, we’re making this together. The people I was working with – they’re the experts on addiction. They know what they’re talking about. They know much more than me. I’m being led into their worlds, so it is my utmost responsibility to respect their worlds. If they give me trust with their stories and with their life, then my first and foremost responsibility is to completely and utterly respect them.

The aim was to build an atmosphere of trust where people know that whatever they’re doing in front of the camera is theirs. It won’t go anywhere until they say it can go somewhere. The films made from the workshops were never shown anywhere. We watched them and they informed what we then did during the actual film. Once we started on the actual production, they understood that what they bring to the camera can go into the actual work and could potentially end up in the film. Particularly with vulnerable people it’s important to have good advice on what to bring to the situation and what not to bring.

I make this point, and we go over and over this, until it gets quite boring: There are stories that are so personal, and I admire people that are able to tell them, but they shouldn’t be on camera. They shouldn’t become public; the stories should stay with them. They can speak about them in recovery networks, but they stay within those networks and within that room and they don’t necessarily come out. We had a lot of workshops and discussions around which parts of their stories and which parts of themselves they were happy to let go out into the world.

When we finished filming, everybody knew that there was a process of reviewing and vetoing. There’s a fair long period of time where people can watch the material and say, “This bit I’m no longer happy with” and I would not show it. They can then remove something if it’s an individual scene. If it’s something within the fiction that has been scripted and filmed, and it’s a big crowd scene with 20 people in it, that’s harder, but that’s normally not sensitive. There is no sensitive material in the big crowd scenes in the film. For example, there’s a fiction scene when the character of Thomas Goudie loses money at the football. Everybody’s in that scene, but nobody reveals anything about themselves.

The real revelations often come in more individual scenes and people have complete rights over them. I would never show anything that they’re uncomfortable with. They will watch this and then they are given three months. Within that time period, I check in with each person, and at the end of these three months’ time, they say, “Yes, I’m really happy with this.” In fact, there have been moments when they said, “I need this to be out. I need this to be heard. It’s good for me. It’s good for my family.” It’s important that everyone understands that once the film is out, I can’t call it back as it will be out in the world.    

It’s a long process. In short, you need a lot of time. You need to make sure people really understand what it is we’re doing when we make a film and to guide people as well in terms of withholding certain things for themselves.

leon: You are a visual artist. How does this affect your way of making a narrative film? Does being a visual artist have distinctive aesthetics in approaching filmmaking?      

Melanie: I think there is a distinction between people who think of themselves as filmmakers and people who come from a visual art background. In terms of the making of the work, there’s obviously quite a lot of blurring between what is commonly referred to as either video art or moving image practice within the visual arts, and filmmaking and independent filmmaking. I would say that, as a visual artist, the frame of reference I have is a slightly different one to that of strict filmmaking. Even though a lot of my research and references come out of film, they also come out of other visual art practices, in particular, sculpture, painting, and photography.

I was trained as a photographer and my filmmaking, and my aesthetic, is still very strongly informed by photography. Our Director of Photography, Andy Schonfelder, also comes from a photography background and a lot of our references coincided and overlapped. We were looking at and referring to very particular kinds of photographers as well as filmmakers. The frame of reference is wider than film and refers to other visual practices. This is a generalization that probably can’t really be upheld across the whole of filmmaking, but a lot of filmmakers are possibly more driven by narrative than I am. I’m probably more driven by image, and I’m also very driven by sound. I love working with sound.

This is the first time I’ve worked narratively and even though I will continue to do that, I’m not primarily interested in dialogue. I’m more interested in images driving the narrative, and the multiplicity of tools at the disposal of a filmmaker, meaning colour, sound, duration, timing, the structure of it. Those drive the narrative rather than necessarily dialogue and text. Whereas a lot of filmmakers will probably be more driven by text.

Michelle Collins is also in the film

leon: Were there challenges and complications you could not foresee when you were planning and preparing for the making of STEPHEN when involving people in addiction recovery and their real-life experiences?

Melanie: There was a wonderful contributor, Frank, who was a big character with an amazing deep voice and real physical presence. He was very engaged within the project and contributed a lot. There were a few times where he missed coming to filming. He suffered from a pulmonary illness, which was possibly a fallout of long-term addiction in his younger years. He was quite elderly by then. He was sad and could no longer come. He felt that he was letting the project down, but he could no longer continue. He eventually died during the process of filming. In the credits, you see the film is in memory to him, which of course is unusual. You don’t necessarily have people you work with in a film pass away in the middle of it. It was a huge shame to lose him. He was an amazing character.

Another challenge would probably apply to working with any people who don’t have any professional experience. There’s quite a lot of nervousness about being good enough and “Can I do this? Can I hold my own? What are my contributions to this? How can I hold this space in front of the camera?” There was a lot of learning involved in that. We had a couple of good coaches who would come in, give people reassurance and help their confidence. It’s the age-old thing – you are good enough. We’re all always just good enough and there is no perfection. There are always things we can do better. Learning this kind of thing, which I think of as radical acceptance, was something that we talked about quite a bit.

leon: Did the making of STEPHEN and Twelve change or alter your perceptions of addiction and/or people in recovery?

Melanie: My opinions of the experiences, views, ideas on addiction and recovery have most definitely changed, been informed, and enriched by both those projects, through working on the Twelve project many years ago, and now working on STEPHEN. Maybe the two most important ones are that addiction knows no boundaries and that filmmaking is a powerful tool in recovery.

With regards to addictions being all pervasive: a lot of people who are in recovery know this. There’s no such thing as addiction affecting people in either lower economic sections more strongly than wealthy people, nor does it more, or less, affect people of different ethnicities. Anybody and everybody could be susceptible to an addiction, depending on the life circumstances, the experiences and the traumas that are thrown their way.

There are probably people who are more or less likely to be affected. There’s a lot of research that goes into inherited markers – if you come from a family that has addiction running through them over generations – then there is possibly a propensity to be susceptible to it. I’m not saying everybody is even and equal in that, but addiction crosses all social classes, economic brackets, ethnicities, geographies, and it has existed across all times. It’s not like it is only a recent issue. Addictions have been around for a very long time. They might not have always been called that, but I think the displacement of our minds has been with us for a long, long time. The susceptibility to that then leading into problematic use has also been around for a long time.

Melanie Manchot: “the film is also a portrait of Liverpool”

The other thing that I’ve learned since Twelve, and hence the desire to make STEPHEN, is that filmmaking potentially is an incredible tool in recovery and in dealing with issues of mental health. I first found this during the making of Twelve and working with people like Stephen at the time. It is not about art therapy. Filmmaking offers people a way to kind of rethink their position in the world. Telling stories about yourself, recording them through the device of the camera and having this lens, this object that looks at you and records what you bring to it, then reviewing it with some distance two or three weeks later and thinking about that person that you see over there on a screen or on a projection that is you or a version of you. Very quickly, I think this tells people that there are different versions of being in each of us. If I can be that person two weeks ago and this person here now, and then feel slightly different, then clearly by extrapolation, this means I can be completely different and I can reinvent. I can become a different person and then an ‘other’ me that is maybe a version of me that suits me better now.

In addiction there’s often this strong attachment to one particular relationship, to the addiction and the objects that pertain to that, be that a bottle or needle, cards, all sorts of objects that become the markers of that primary relationship. In letting go of that primary relationship, something else needs to happen. It leaves this huge void. I would suggest it is more powerful than a breakup. It is different but probably equally difficult to the tragedy of a loved person dying. It’s so fundamental when that primary relationship needs to disappears, or rather when one needs to relinquish it. This void needs to be replenished with something else.

A collective creative process can be so empowering to everybody who’s part of it, because it’s joined up, and because it’s together and becomes bigger and better because it’s not you as an individual, it’s everybody doing it together. That sense of belonging and togetherness and sharing a journey, not just the recovery journey, but a journey of creating something together, that’s very powerful. Making STEPHEN has also been, in many ways, guided and framed by a lot of research into filmmaking as a potential tool in recovery. We – me, my producer, but also two sociologists (Dr Lena Theodoropoulou and Dr Nicole Vitellone) at the University of Liverpool – we’ve been trying to campaign for the consideration of filmmaking in therapeutic processes and in recovery.

In many ways, STEPHEN is a film that is built on portraits. It is first and foremost a portrait of one person in many different guises. As we said at the beginning, it’s an archive film, it’s a documentary, it’s a fiction film – it has a lot of observation in it. Stephen Giddings is there, across so many ways. He’s there as himself – as playing a version of himself, a fictionalized Stephen Giddings, and Thomas Goudie, he’s there in multiplicity of living through fact and fiction. If those boundaries between fact and fiction, between different genres, weren’t seen as being so strict, it would (or will) allow for much more fluid and interesting kinds of filmmaking. That’s going back to your question about the difference between being an artist making a film and maybe a filmmaker. To me, those boundaries and those genres are not as important. In fact, I think it’s much more interesting to break them and to work in between different genres and different modes of making. That’s a very rich territory to explore, for myself as well as for other artists and filmmakers.

Melanie Manchot will be attending the following Q+A screenings of STEPHEN:


Castle Cinema, London | May 21 Book tickets here

Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge | May 22 Book tickets here

Firstsite, Colchester | May 23 Book tickets now

FACT Picturehouse, Liverpool | May 24 Book tickets here

Cameo Picturehouse, Edinburgh | May 25 Book tickets here

Milton Keynes Gallery and Cinema, Milton Keynes | May 28 Book tickets here

Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast | May 27 + 30 Book tickets here

Close Up Cinema, London | 7 June Website here (online booking available soon)

Haslemere Hall | June 19 Book tickets here