Stephen Quay
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Stephen Quay was born in 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art and later continued his education at the Royal College of Art in London, where he met his twin brother Timothy and began collaborating in animation. Together, they founded Atelier Koninck and produced their first experimental short films in the late 1970s. Throughout his career, Stephen has directed and co-directed short films, feature films, and stop-motion projects, including Nocturna Artificialia (1979), Street of Crocodiles (1986), Institute Benjamenta (1995), and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005). His work is characterized by dreamlike, detailed, and symbolic worlds, often using dolls and carefully crafted objects to create surreal and unsettling atmospheres.
Known for
Credits
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
Director
The Doll's Breath (2019)
Director
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2025)
Director
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005)
Director
Inventorium of Traces (2009)
Director
Eurydice: She, So Beloved (2007)
Director
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer: Prague's Alchemist of Film (1984)
Director
Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum) (2011)
Director
Punch and Judy: Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy (1981)
Director
Stille Nacht V: Dog Door (2001)
Director
The Phantom Museum: Random Forays Into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome's Medical Collection (2003)
Director
Tales of the Brothers Quay (1987)
Director
This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
Director
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
Director
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Director
Alice in Not So Wonderland (2007)
Director
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984)
Director
Stille Nacht III: Tales from Vienna Woods (1993)
Director
Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You (1993)
Director
The Comb (1991)
Director
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. (2013)
Director
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988)
Director
Igor Stravinsky: The Paris Years Chez Pleyel 1920-1929 (1982)
Director
The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993 (2000)
Director
The Eternal Day of Michel de Ghelderode (1981)
Director
The Sandman (2000)
Director
Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003 (2004)
Director
Wonderwood: Comme des garçons (2010)
Director
Songs for Dead Children (2003)
Director
Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? (1992)
Director
Maska (2010)
Director
Sonic Cinema: Sparklehorse (2001)
Director
The Art Teacher from Drohobycz: Bruno Schulz (2022)
Director
In Absentia (2000)
Director
Rain Dance (1988)
Director
The Summit (1995)
Director
VadeMecum (2021)
Director
Anamorphosis (1993)
Director
11 Preliminary Orbits Around Planet Lem (2021)
Director
A Fratricide (1981)
Director
Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers (2007)
Director
Janáček: Intimate Excursions (1983)
Director
Kieślowski by Quays (—)
Director
Ghosts and Whispers (2022)
Director
The Calligrapher (1991)
Director
Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
Director
Kinoteka Ident (2009)
Director
Ex Voto (1989)
Director