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Stephen McCarty

It’s a kind of magic – not the 1980s stadium rock extravaganza type, more the movie-make-believe sort.
“Editing is magic!” says Mary Stephen, Hong Kong-born film and documentary editor and the calibre of practitioner to whom the description “legendary” is frequently applied.
Stephen is speaking on video, from her Paris home, about a long career spent almost entirely in the comparative dark, yet one without which numerous films and documentaries would be unrecognisable, as well as, undoubtedly, worse off.
What does she mean by “magic”?
“Well, that’s what it is!” she says. “It can make things happen – it makes emotions happen, it makes things you never knew existed happen. In documentaries, especially, it’s even very dangerous, in the sense that you can make the characters do anything you want. It’s magic in the sense that I have done fiction films where I turned the characters around to make them seem like somebody else.
“So yeah, it’s magic!”

Stephen also made the case for editorial magic a few weeks ago, when she was presented with a Canadian Cinema Editors Lifetime Achievement Award in Toronto. Accepting the honour from protégée Xi Feng, now an established film editor herself, Stephen said, “It’s only half-time, as far as I’m concerned”, alluding to her workload and current, personal project – more of which later.
Stephen’s extensive tally of credits attests to her achievements as a director, as well as editor, writer and composer, and goes as far back as the 1970s. In the years since, the technology powering the editing room has changed immeasurably: unless perhaps in some retro workshop or “living museum”, film is no longer physically cut and spliced together with tape to facilitate an edit.
But the editor’s craft has remained essentially the same. Creative more than button-pushing and technical, it still requires, in simple terms, turning raw footage into coherent sequences, then assembling those as a finished picture. So are editors the unrecognised heroines and heroes of the film and television worlds? After all, no one talks about the editor; they just talk about the director and the screenwriter, don’t they?
“Yeah – and the stars!” says Stephen. “Definitely. But the people who know, know that editors are the backbone, that editing is the backbone, of [films]. Actually, at the Oscars, the beautiful African-American actress Lupita Nyong’o, in her acceptance speech” – after bagging the 2014 award for Best Supporting Actress, in 12 Years a Slave – “thanked the editor, which was extremely rare,” says Stephen. “That made her even more respected by a lot of people like me, because she’s knowledgeable.”

Stephen’s own route to international acclaim began in the Hong Kong cine clubs of the 1960s. In her early teens she discovered The Chinese Student Weekly magazine, whose pages featured esteemed film critic Law Kar. “That really got me interested and taught me about European cinema – especially French New Wave,” says Stephen.
In 1967, the Stephen family emigrated to Canada, where Mary stayed for about eight years before moving, in her early 20s, to her European home. “I came here in 1976 and I’ve never left!” she says. That France would be a long-stay location would be thanks largely to Stephen’s work with French New Wave titan Éric Rohmer, the director, critic, screenwriter and novelist who made it possible for Stephen to remain in the country.
“Because I wanted to stay in France,” she says, “Éric offered me the job of assistant to [chief editor] Cécile Decugis. He said, ‘You’ve already directed two films of your own, I wonder if you will agree to be her assistant.’ Which I did.”
Later, Stephen would play an essential role in shaping a host of celebrated Rohmer movies, casting spells on Rendezvous in Paris (1995), Autumn Tale (1998) and The Lady and the Duke (2001). Hong Kong and mainland works bearing the Stephen stamp include Ann Hui On-wah’s Love After Love (2020), Dot 2 Dot (2014) by Amos Why, and Fan Lixin’s Last Train Home (2009).

Constantly in demand by film festivals and educational faculties worldwide, Stephen has taught aspects of filmmaking at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, and many other institutions. And she is happy to admit that had she not met Rohmer, a contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, her life would have been radically different.
“That’s part of my experimental documentary-essay film, Palimpsest: Traces of a Name,” says its writer, director and editor. “I would have stayed in Canada and probably not gone into cinema. I was interested in other things, like setting up my own store, things that had nothing to do with film.
“Palimpsest is based on archives and new footage [and explores] my family name, Stephen. What would [life] have been like if my name had not been Mary Stephen but Mary Chan, say? It’s a really valid question. Why a Chinese family would have adopted an English name and what that meant. How it affected everything,” she says.
And how did it?
“You’ll have to wait to see the film!”


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European cinema

The Hong Kong director who became Éric Rohmer’s editor: Mary Stephen on a life in film

Hong Kong-born editor Mary Stephen hard at work editing Autumn Tale, a 1988 drama by French filmmaker Éric Rohmer, a legend of the French New Wave. Photo: Francoise Etchegaray

Mary Stephen in Paris. Picture: James Vaughan

Mary Stephen showing family footage from Palimpsest: Traces of a Name at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, 2024. Credit: Christine Vu

Sandra Ma Sichun (left) and Faye Yu Feihong in a still from Ann Hui’s 2020 film Love After Love, which was edited by Mary Stephen. Photo: Alibaba Pictures

Star-studded Hong Kong movie trailers the focus of exhibition exploring their importance

Bruce Lee in a still from Thunderstorm. Photo: HKFA 

Coming to a Theatre Near You – Gems of Hong Kong Film Trailers exhibition, at the Hong Kong Film Archive, features trailers for Hong Kong movies and delves into how they were edited to grab attention. Photo: HKFA


A still from the trailer of 1966 movie You do me Wrong, featured in the Coming to a Theatre Near You exhibition. Photo: courtesy of Chi Leun Film Company Limited and Mr Jack Lee Fong.j

Bruce Lee in a still from the trailer for the 1957 movie Thunderstorm, featured in the Coming to a Theatre Near You exhibition. Photo: HKFA

A still from the trailer for the 1970 movie The Wandering Swordsman, featured in the Coming to a Theatre Near You exhibition. Photo: courtesy of Celestial Pictures Limited

The exhibition’s Tunnel of Stars has walls on which are shown star-studded clips from film trailers. Photo: HKFA

How Hong Kong movie producer, screenwriter and lyricist Saville Chan wants to add feature film director to his résumé

Hong Kong film producer, screenwriter and award-winning lyricist Saville Chan tells Post Magazine why he hopes his future lies in the director’s chair. Photo: Saville Chan

Chan has won numerous best original film song honours at film awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Photo: Saville Chan

Sylvia Chang Ai-chia in a still from A Light Never Goes Out. Photo: Edko Films

Sylvia Chang Ai-chia in a still from A Light Never Goes Out, a title inspired by a song by English rock band the Smiths. Photo: Edko Films 

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A poster for Steven Berkoff’s play Greek at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre.

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Bonni Chan and Curran in a scene from a play in 1996. Photo: SCMP

Hong Kong Oscar winner Ruby Yang reflects on her career as M+ museum shows her early films

Ruby Yang at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, where she is the director. Photo:  Ruby Yang

Yang and Lambert Yam on screen at the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, which ran from May 30 to June 2, 2024 at Hong Kong’s M+ museum. Photo: Ruby Yang

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Jamison at the What’s Good Music Awards in 2022. Photo: John David Dela Peri

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Magazines

PostMag

A chance meeting saw the Hong Kong-born filmmaker work ‘magic’ on modern classics by French New Wave auteur Éric Rohmer, a contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut


A chance meeting saw Mary Stephen appointed to work ‘magic’ on a string of works by French New Wave auteur Éric Rohmer, as well as films by Ann Hui and Fan Lixin


The Hong Kong director who became Éric Rohmer’s editor: Mary Stephen on a life in film

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}A chance meeting saw the Hong Kong-born filmmaker work ‘magic’ on modern classics by French New Wave auteur Éric Rohmer, a contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut

A chance meeting saw the Hong Kong-born filmmaker work ‘magic’ on modern classics by French New Wave auteur Éric Rohmer, a contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut