Mary Stephen

The film tells the story of a young girl who travels from Shanghai to Hong Kong in pursuit of education, but ends up working for her aunt seducing rich and powerful men.

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.”

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

Handan and Korhan a middle-aged couple who live their lives in one of istanbul's best neighborhoods. Handan constantly invents things for herself in order to fill her life. Handan, imitates her friend Sermin and starts writing! But this desire, which is innocent in the first place, will become jealous over time and diverge in different ways.

A young woman in modern-day Shanghai whose chance encounter with a stranger moves her to divulge a deep-seated secret. In atmospheric flashbacks she is shown in an old house filled with mementos of the Jewish population who were given asylum in Shanghai during World War II.

A middle class young man rebels against his father’s brutish authority and seeks a rough romance with a woman of ethnic minority. Yuce’s moral tale draws from the example of today’s Turkish youth and the timeless shadow of fathers over sons.

In an enchanted forest, back in the time of the Druids, the shepherd Céladon and the shepherdess Astrée share a pure and chaste love. Fooled by a suitor, Astrée dismisses Céladon, who throws himself into a river out of despair. She thinks he's dead, but he's been secretly rescued by some nymphs. Faithful to the promise he made to Astrée to never appear before her again, Céladon must overcome many obstacles to break the curse. Mad with love and despair, coveted by the nymphs, surrounded by rivals, and obliged to disguise himself as a woman to be near the one he loves, will he manage to make himself known without breaking his oath? A romance filled with doubt, hazards, and delicious temptations.

How to stay at your lover's side (who's married to another woman) all day long without anyone noticing...

Return to the Border is a documentary directed by Zhao Liang about his return to his hometown in China that borders the Yalu river and North Korea. The film presents deep insight into both the Chinese and North Korean societies and changes that have taken place over the last several decades.

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.

The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.

The universal story of the meeting between a man and a woman.

This film follows the odyssey of a group of Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles, trying to find their place in America amidst the unfolding of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

Grace Dalrymple Elliot is a British aristocrat trapped in Paris during the French Revolution. Determined to maintain her stiff upper lip and pampered life despite the upheaval, Grace continues her friendship with the Duke of Orléans while risking her life and liberty to protect a fugitive.

A featurette directed by French actress Edwige Shaki where Eric Rohmer worked as a technical adviser, THE CURVE is a movie that has the inimitable Rohmer stamp. Talky, it makes its fifteen minutes seem a little longer. However, it's a playful little thing, where an art student meets his grandfather, a sculptor, and both exchange ideas about that part of the woman that is so alluring -- the curve of her back.

Magali, forty-something, is a winemaker and a widow: she loves her work but feels lonely. Her friends Rosine and Isabelle both want secretly to find a husband for Magali.

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.

A documentary by Mary Stephen

A documentary by Mary Stephen.

A shy maths graduate takes a holiday in Dinard before starting his first job. He hopes his sort-of girlfriend will join him, but soon strikes up a friendship with another girl working in town. She in turn introduces him to a further young lady who fancies him. Thus the quiet young lad finds he is having to do some tricky juggling in territory new to him.

Three stories of love and coincidence around the theme of dates in Paris.

The socialist mayor of a small village in France dreams of building an arts center but he runs up against some opposition.

Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

A short film directed by and starring Rosette, best known for her acting work with Éric Rohmer, featuring a star-studded cast and crew of regular players from Rohmer films. With the help of her friends, Rosette takes advantage of a gullible stranger passing by in order to sell him all her roses.

A short film directed by and starring Rosette, best known for her acting work with Éric Rohmer, featuring a star-studded cast and crew of regular players from Rohmer films. With the help of her friends, Rosette takes advantage of a gullible stranger passing by in order to sell him all her roses.

A series of stories told by Rosette about her vacation. Filmed in super 8 by Eric Rohmer.

A series of stories told by Rosette about her vacation. Filmed in super 8 by Eric Rohmer.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.