Palimpsest: The Story of a Name

Through a canny postcolonial lens, a filmmaker whose Western name is at odds with her Chinese heritage peels back conflicting layers of family history.

“All my life I’ve been asked about my family name,” reflects Mary Stephen (Justocoeur, MIFF 1981). She was born in British Hong Kong to Hilda and Henry Stephen, respectively known in earlier life as Chan Tik-Fong and Hilda Yik. Like their filmmaker daughter, both parents had a creative streak: she wrote poetry, while he was an avid amateur filmmaker and journal keeper, documenting their family life extensively. Poring over her father’s records, Stephen, as the film’s narrator, uncovers all manner of likely tall tales – including a claim of an Indigenous Australian grandfather – and meditates upon the mechanisms and functions of such mythologisation.

Together with her parents, Stephen emigrated to Montreal at age 15 before moving to Paris, where she would establish herself as the editor of some of Éric Rohmer’s most cherished films, including A Tale of Winter and A Summer’s Tale. Her own directorial work, largely unseen for decades, has recently enjoyed a much-deserved revival thanks to the restoration of her dreamy 1978 debut, Shades of Silk (MIFF 2026). Stephen’s latest film, which received two Golden Horse Awards, proves a richly personal new entry in an oeuvre dedicated to the exploration of identity across borders.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival