T H E C R E AT O R S O F N. C .
Cultivating Community Caroline Stephenson steps out from behind the camera
By Wiley Cash • Photographs by Mallory Cash
According to filmmaker Caro-
line Stephenson, “It’s all about storytelling.” She should know. She was born and raised in rural Murfreesboro, North Carolina, where she grew up surrounded by stories and storytellers. Despite the rich culture around her, as a young person, Stephenson believed that real art could only be found outside Hertford County. Her father, a retired professor and writer, and her late mother, an architectural historian, regularly traveled with the family to places like Norfolk, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and metropolitan New York, where they would visit museums and view films in art house theatres.
desire to create, but also in an all-too-familiar angst-driven urge to leave home. Like so many young people who think opportunity and adventure are waiting somewhere else, Stephenson says that she “couldn’t wait to get out of there.” First, she spent two years at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, and then two years at Boston University before transferring to Columbia College Chicago, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in film. Soon, she was living in Los Angeles, beginning a career that would carry her to places like Prague, Vienna, Athens and Budapest, working as an assistant director on sets for films and television shows like
“That made a big impression,” says Stephenson, especially the films. “I wanted to do that.” The restlessness that Stephenson felt as a coming-of-age artist in rural eastern North Carolina manifested itself not only in her The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
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