Mary Stephen
Film director, Hong Kong - Canada - France
Born in Hong kong, Mary Stephen grew up in canada. Formerly french New wave master Eric Rohmer’s editor and co-composer, Stephen has been working with documentary and fiction directors from around the world, including Ann Hui "Love after love", Li Yang "Blind mountain", Fan Lixin "Last train home", Seren Yüce "Majority", Du Haibin "1428", Jessey Tsang’s "Flowing stories", Tiffany Hsiung "The apology", and Nicole Schafer "Buddha in Africa". Her own films as writer-director include "Vision from the edge: Breyten Breytenbach Painting The Lines" and "The Memory of Water". She also teaches, sits on juries and participates in workshops.
PALIMPSEST: Re-inventing the Self, from Bloomsbury to Wuhan
‘PALIMPSEST’ is an experimental film project exploring the origin of my family name Stephen, though I am ethnically Chinese born in the British colony of Hong Kong. After the family emigrated to Canada, I moved to France and became indissociably connected with the films of emblematic French New Wave director, Eric Rohmer. In the process of this investigation, the questions of colonial identities, exotic fantasies and racial re-appropriation emerge inevitably; but beyond that, the story of how being related (or not) to Virginia Woolf née Stephen, might have changed the path of a life.