Mary Stephen

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…

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.

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.

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.

Set in 1935 Shanghai, the film follows two former schoolgirl friends whose relationship evolves past platonic bonds, exploring the tension between their desire for social stability and a deeper, more complex emotional connection.

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.

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.

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.

Set in 1935 Shanghai, the film follows two former schoolgirl friends whose relationship evolves past platonic bonds, exploring the tension between their desire for social stability and a deeper, more complex emotional connection.

Set in 1935 Shanghai, the film follows two former schoolgirl friends whose relationship evolves past platonic bonds, exploring the tension between their desire for social stability and a deeper, more complex emotional connection.

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.

A documentary by Mary Stephen

A documentary by Mary Stephen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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, partly through the adventure of a tragic-comic romantic fantasy, partly through bonding with her young student Niki. Niki is making a documentary film with her mother about their family's migration from China to their Hakka village in the New Territories. Melanie and Niki Both realize they are living with an original "molecule" that can't be erased even after generations of dilution, the so-called "Memory of Water."