An accomplished film editor who went on to forge a long creative partnership with none other than Éric Rohmer, Hong Kong–born Mary Stephen’s 1978 debut feature announced her as a director to watch in her own right. Suffused with alluring atmospherics and a slight air of the oneiric, Ombres de soie traces the relationship between two Chinese women in Shanghai in 1935; through glances, gestures, and confessional voice-overs, the two women negotiate the tension between their shared wish for stability and the nagging sense that there may be more to their bond than meets the eye…. An astounding low-budget achievement (in which 1970s Paris passes for 1930s Shanghai), this entrancing film evokes the Marguerite Duras of India Song, which is no accident: Stephen explicitly wished for Ombres de soie to be a counterpoint to India Song, from an Asian woman’s point of view.
Ombres de soie (Shades of Silk) was restored from a 16mm print scanned at Library and Archives Canada. The 2K restoration work was carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna in 2024, and is made possible by the generous support of M+, Hong Kong, 2024.

Melanie returns to Hong Kong as filmmaker-in-residence at a university after living abroad for decades. She tries to redefine her cultural roots and affiliations, partly through the adventure of a tragic-comic romantic fantasy, partly through bonding with her young student Niki. Niki is making a documentary film with her mother about their family’s migration from China to their Hakka village in the New Territories. Melanie and Niki Both realise they are living with an original “molecule” that can’t be erased even after generations of dilution, the so-called “Memory of Water.”