Courtney Stephens

Courtney Stephens is a Los Angeles–based filmmaker whose work is concerned with the private worlds of women. Stephens is a graduate of the American Film Institute, and has written several fictional shorts. Equestrian Sexual Response, about the sexual coming-of-age of a country girl, premiered at South by Southwest and was nominated for a Student Academy Award. Another, Life on Earth, about the fantasies of a young ward of the court, has played numerous festivals worldwide. Stephens is the recipient of a Sloan Scholarship and a Hewlett-Packard grant, and assisted director Terrence Malick on The Tree of Life (2011), as well as his follow-up film, currently in post-production. Her interest in the study of the body stemmed from undergraduate work in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley. She was an assistant editor and contributor to the New York-based arts and culture magazine Cabinet. Courtney has taught silent filmmaking to teenage girls and will be lecturing at Rutgers University this fall, before heading to India on a Fulbright scholarship to work on Venus Peregrine, a film about female travelers in colonial India. She is the director of White Gloves.