Stephen with Q&A

• 88mins |

Stephen is auditioning to play himself in an inventive, cinematic and moving exploration of addiction and mental health.

Visual artist Melanie Manchot works with a recovery group in Liverpool, who take up roles in a semi-fictional film-within-a-film that explores addiction and mental health from multiple perspectives. It is centred around Stephen, a character recovering from gambling and alcohol addictions. References to the first police crime reconstruction, filmed in Liverpool in 1901, are a reminder that addiction has long existed within the fabric of our culture. It’s a tough process and emotionally charged scenes reveal inner truths, which gain additional power when the people playing the roles are, in some sense, playing themselves. Visually striking, STEPHEN is a startling record of this form of treatment and a reminder of how dextrous the documentary form can be.

As well as STEPHEN, the evening will include a showing of Stade, a short film made by Allister Gall and Dan Paolantonio, working collaboratively as Imperfect Cinema.

Screening followed by a Q&A with director Melanie Manchot & Allister Gall (STADE)

STADE

Commissioned by The Box and the BFI, Stade was commissioned specifically to be screened at the 2022 Because The Night Belongs to Us exhibition at the Box in Plymouth. A year in the making, this ten-minute film explores the surprising visual and sound aesthetics of an amateur football facility after dark, choosing to focus on the formal audio-visual qualities of the location. With a soundtrack composed by sound-artist Patrick James Pearson (LYR), this film continues Imperfect Cinema’s exploration of the possibilities of community-focused site-specific experimental documentary.