Metrograph

Family history becomes detective story in the latest film by Stephen, a Chinese woman born in British Hong Kong, here embarking on an investigation into how, exactly, she wound up with the distinctly Western surname “Stephen.” Delving into personal documents left behind by her father, Stephen’s inquiry takes her into unexpected nooks and crannies of her hometown’s turbulent colonial history, while turning up not one conclusive story but a host of different narratives (along with much selective pruning of the family tree), as Stephen discovers the Rashomon effect very much at work in how we tend to straighten out the knotty facts regarding “ancestry.”

Q&A with filmmaker Mary Stephen on Sunday, October 5th