Palimpsest: The Story of a Name 隱蹟之書：重寫自我

Filmmaker in Focus: Mary Stephen • UK Theatrical Premiere • Q&A

France, Hong Kong, Taiwan | 2025 | Colour | 108’

In Cantonese, Mandarin, English and French with Chinese and English subtitles

Dir.: Mary Stephen 雪美蓮

Why does a Chinese woman born in British Hong Kong carry the surname “Stephen”? Many people didn’t expect to see an Asian face under the name of Mary Stephen, especially when she was credited as the film editor who worked with French New Wave director Éric Rohmer for more than two decades.

In her latest film, Stephen plays detective on the mystery behind her own name, digging into her father's archives, excavating reels of home movies and stacks of biographies, where multiple layers of narratives, often conflicting, emerge: an Indigenous Australian paternal grandfather, her mother’s shifting pen names as a poet, and a tenuous connection to Virginia Woolf, whose maiden name was also Stephen. As the film unravels the roots of her name, we see threads of a personal story interwoven into the vast socio-political fabric of class and race, inseparable from the convoluted colonial history of her hometown.

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name is an ingenious, essayistic archival collage of a family portrait that explores self-mythmaking and questions the reliability of mementos. The film had its world premiere at TIFF and won Best Film Editing and Best Documentary Feature at the Golden Horse Awards.

Followed by an in-person Q&A with Mary Stephen, moderated by Hyun Jin Cho.

Find out more info or book your tickets on https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/event/hkff-palimpsest-the-story-of-a-name

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