Director
Stephen Quay
79 years · Norristown, Pennsylvania, USA · 51 films
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.
Best known for
Street of Crocodiles
1986 · Director, Editor
Quay
2015 · Self
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life
1995 · Director, Writer
On Plex
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer
1984 · Director, Cinematography
The Falls
1982 · Ipson Fallari
On Kanopy
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
2005 · Director, Writer
On Metrograph
Filmography 51
Postscriptum. Ruminations on My Craft
2026 · Director
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
2025 · Screenplay, Director
On OVID
Ghosts and Whispers
2022 · Director
11 Preliminary Orbits Around Planet Lem
2021 · Director
VadeMecum
2021 · Director
The Doll's Breath
2019 · Director
The 1000 Eyes of Dr Maddin
2015 · Actor
Quay
2015 · Self
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H.
2013 · Writer, Director
Behind the Scenes with the Quay Brothers
2011 · Self
Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum)
2011 · Director, Editor
Wonderwood: Comme des garçons
2010 · Director
Maska
2010 · Director, Writer
Inside The Institute
2010 · Actor
The Art of Time
2009 · Actor
Kinoteka Ident
2009 · Director
The Bug Trainer
2009 · Self - stop-motion animator
Eurydice: She, So Beloved
2007 · Director, Editor
Alice in Not So Wonderland
2007 · Director, Writer
Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers
2007 · Director
The Making of "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes"
2006 · Actor
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
2005 · Director, Writer
On Metrograph
Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003
2004 · Director
The Phantom Museum: Random Forays Into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome's Medical Collection
2003 · Librarian, Director