Review: Palimpsest: the Story of a Name (dir. Mary Stephen)

The word Palimpsest is indicative of an eroded past; text that has been erased and rewritten

while still holding a remnant of what once was. That serves as the basis for Mary Stephen’s

documentary “Palimpsest: the Story of a Name”. Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese family, who

then migrated to Québec, her uncommon surname stands out, prompting the question: How did

she get it?

At the beginning of the film, an interview from 2001 is shown where Stephen claims to have

gone back to Hong Kong to discover the roots of her name, that of which she never knew up to

that point. Stephen’s film is that of a journey through her personal excavation; digging into her

family history to uncover said roots, drawing from a myriad of archival sources: home movies,

family photographs, birth certificates, undiscovered journals, etc. This material traverses the

vastness of her family’s past, from colonial Hong Kong to Canada and beyond, creating a

portrait of how history is shaped through the stories that are passed down and what we discover

outside of that.

In the context of the film, Stephen has already arrived at the discoveries presented here, way

before this was made; but it is through her process as a filmmaker — and more importantly, an

editor — that these discoveries truly come alive. The history passes through Stephen, then

through the medium of film, before it reaches us. For the audience, we are learning for the first

time. For Stephen, she is relearning what she had just discovered. At the centre of it all is

cinema, which is just one of many ways to preserve the souls of those who came before. The

masses will never get to see Stephen’s family archives, but through this film, we get to share a

piece of it.

The deeply personal nature of the film prompted me to look through some of the responses to

the film. I came across one that was particularly striking: a person whose mother passed on 10

years prior but left behind many diaries that they never dug into. Having seen this film, they

finally decided to do so. Perhaps it is through these shared acts that the film becomes a beacon

of sorts, connecting various people to go through the same process that Stephen did — one of

discovery, learning and relearning, which in a way is reminiscent of a palimpsest itself, rewritten

yet not unfamiliar.

This film will play at the 2026 Singapore Chinese Film Festival. For more info, please visit their

website scff.sg