What to See in the 2025 New York Film Festival's Second Week

"I think of these screenings not as conserving cinema's past but, rather, as safeguarding its future. The vital thing about the history of this art form is its creative power, its ability to energize filmmakers of later generations and inspire movies to come. In that regard, one of the major events of this year's festival is the world première of a restoration of Mary Stephen's film "Ombres de Soie" ("Shades of Silk"), from 1978."

"She made a few short films in Canada and then, in the mid-seventies, got a grant to study film in Paris, where she made "Shades." The film was shot cheaply-in 16-mm., with a tiny crew and Stephen herself playing one of the main characters. But the result could not be further from the familiar rawness of independent filmmaking. In a spare sixty-two minutes of sinuously elegant images and alluring surfaces, it unfolds a narrative that spans continents and decades."

"The story is one of impossible love, centering on two young Chinese women, high-school best friends in Shanghai in the nineteen-twenties whose relationship has an intense erotic current continuing into adulthood. In 1934, Lysanne (played by Alexandria Brouwer) is living in Paris and writes to her friend Marlène (played by Stephen), who's studying at Wellesley, imploring her to transfer to a university in Paris."

Mary Stephen's Ombres de Soie (Shades of Silk, 1978) is a sixty-two-minute feature that blends formal rigor, stylistic refinement, and historical imagination. Stephen, born in Hong Kong and raised in Montreal, made the film in Paris after receiving a grant to study film. Shot on 16-mm with a tiny crew and with Stephen acting, the film achieves sinuously elegant imagery and alluring surfaces. The narrative spans continents and decades, focusing on an intense erotic friendship between two Chinese women who meet as high-school friends in 1920s Shanghai and continue their bond into adulthood. A restored print received its world premiere at the New York Film Festival.

Read at The New Yorker