Mary Stephen

Editing

Mary Stephen

Hong Kong, China

Mary Stephen is a Canadian editor and director residing in France, originally from Hong Kong. A director of documentary and fiction films, Mary Stephen was for many years the editor of Éric Rohmer's films, with whom she co-signed the music for several films under the collective pseudonym Sébastien Erms. Decorated with the insignia of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters (2018).

Acting credits

The Aviator's Wife poster
7.2

A student is devastated when he finds that his girlfriend is cheating on him. In order to find out why she did it, he decides to spy on her and her airline pilot lover. Then he sees the pilot with a blonde woman and he begins to follow them…

The Aviator's Wife

1981

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name poster
7.7

Veteran filmmaker Mary Stephen digs into her own family past to uncover the long-hidden origins of her Western surname, revealing a story of culture shock, colonialism, and contested remembrance.

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name

2026

No artwork available
7.3

Editing is more than just assembling shots in a certain order, it's an art form, and this documentary celebrates the craft and how it has grown and evolved through the history of the cinema. Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing traces this story from the world of pioneering silent auteurs such as Georges Méliès and D.W. Griffith through the bold stylings of the masters of the French New Wave to the technical and creative innovations of films like The Matrix, Memento, and The Sixth Sense. Edge Codes.com includes interviews with noted directors George Lucas and Norman Jewison, as well as top editors Thelma Schoonmaker, Zach Staenberg, Dody Dorn, Andrew Mondshein, and many more.

Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing

2004

Shades of Silk poster
10.0

Shades of Silk is a film of mood and memory; two Chinese women, who had been friends in school, are caught between a longing for social stability and something much more fulfilling but frightening and vague in their relationship. A large part of the action takes place in the Shanghai of 1935 although the film was shot entirely on location in Paris.

Shades of Silk

1978

Eric Rohmer, je vais vous raconter une histoire poster
7.0

Françoise Etchegaray and Mary Stephen, who worked with Rohmer, talk about his Tales of four seasons.

Eric Rohmer, je vais vous raconter une histoire

2018

Behind the camera

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name poster
7.7

Veteran filmmaker Mary Stephen digs into her own family past to uncover the long-hidden origins of her Western surname, revealing a story of culture shock, colonialism, and contested remembrance.

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name

2026

Labyrinthe poster
NR

Shot during Mary Stephen's time in Canada, Labyrinthe is an experimental spellbinder. Two girls, one Caucasian and the other Asian, are dressed in identical attires, loitering in, bumping along and leaping up and down labyrinth-like cross-cutting corridors where religious and social contexts overlap. Traversing between art and intellectual spheres of East and West, Stephen and her co-directors put their finger on the pulse of the paradoxes that underlie a dual cultural identity.

Labyrinthe

1973

Shades of Silk poster
10.0

Shades of Silk is a film of mood and memory; two Chinese women, who had been friends in school, are caught between a longing for social stability and something much more fulfilling but frightening and vague in their relationship. A large part of the action takes place in the Shanghai of 1935 although the film was shot entirely on location in Paris.

Shades of Silk

1978

Shades of Silk poster
10.0

Shades of Silk is a film of mood and memory; two Chinese women, who had been friends in school, are caught between a longing for social stability and something much more fulfilling but frightening and vague in their relationship. A large part of the action takes place in the Shanghai of 1935 although the film was shot entirely on location in Paris.

Shades of Silk

1978

Vision from the Edge: Breyten Breytenbach Painting the Lines poster
NR

In Vision from the Edge: Breyten Breytenbach Painting the Lines, Stephen's camera follows the exiled South African poet–artist Breyten Breytenbach as he executes a series of scroll paintings for a museum in the Netherlands. Poetry readings in different tongues are fused with the poet's reflection on philosophies of religion and mind.

Vision from the Edge: Breyten Breytenbach Painting the Lines

1998

Memory of Water poster
NR

Melanie returns to Hong Kong as filmmaker-in-residence at a university after living abroad for decades. She tries to redefine her cultural roots and affiliations. Niki is making a documentary film about their family’s migration from China to their Hakka village. Melanie and Niki Both realise they are living with an original “molecule” that can’t be erased even after generations of dilution, the so-called “Memory of Water.”

Memory of Water

2018

A Very Easy Death poster
NR

A Very Easy Death is a profoundly moving end-of-life account of Stephen's mother passing away in a hospital. Taking inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir's masterpiece, Stephen's finely nuanced portrait of bereavement, takes the viewers metaphorically through songs and images.

A Very Easy Death

1975

No artwork available
9.0

A documentary by Mary Stephen

In Transit, in Transition: Poem from South Africa

1998

Justocoeur poster
7.0

Three friends — Paul, a conservative intellectual: Selena, a dancer who specialises in African dance: and Gabriel, an artist who manages to move with ease between the centres of their different worlds Paul maintains an ambiguous friendship with Gabriel, who goes through a series of homosexual affairs. For Selena, emotions become difficult to handle when she finds herself involved with both men. in the contradictory position of being in the centre and on the outside.

Justocoeur

1980

Justocoeur poster
7.0

Three friends — Paul, a conservative intellectual: Selena, a dancer who specialises in African dance: and Gabriel, an artist who manages to move with ease between the centres of their different worlds Paul maintains an ambiguous friendship with Gabriel, who goes through a series of homosexual affairs. For Selena, emotions become difficult to handle when she finds herself involved with both men. in the contradictory position of being in the centre and on the outside.

Justocoeur

1980

The Great Canadian Puberty Rite poster
NR

This lyrical film diary chronicles a westward “pilgrimage” Stephen made, together with her partner John Cressey, at the end of her studies in Montreal, in the summer of ’74. As she contemplates the impetus for the journey, her camera surveys a variety of side-of-the-road attractions, snowy mountain vistas, and grassy knolls studded with cheerful fellow roadtrippers.

The Great Canadian Puberty Rite

1974

No artwork available
10.0

A documentary by Mary Stephen.

In Transit, in Transition: A Poetic Encounter in Hong Kong

1997