George Wingate: Recollections

Hi, my name is Mary Hanlon.

I approach documentary filmmaking as a space for intuitive discovery — where the unconscious finds form and personal mythologies can be reexamined. As a director I focus on voices often overlooked or oversimplified, using meditative, hybrid forms to explore memory, identity, and creative survival. I’m drawn to stories that ask us to look again, and more closely.

With Recollections, I aim to bring these values to a wider audience through submissions to festivals including Sundance, Berlin, DOC NYC, Cannes, and IDFA among others. My previous films have screened nationally and internationally. I hold a BA from The New School and an MFA from Hunter College, and was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2014. My first feature, The Mirrored Road, was a DOC LA finalist in 2023.

Recollections, my feature in production, follows American painter George Wingate as he reflects on his creative journey. His story is rooted in the New York art world—he worked from The Van Dyck, one of the city’s first live/work artist spaces, and connected with artists including Lois Dodd, Betty Parsons, and Lucy Lippard. As he relocated to Massachusetts, his work evolved and expanded. Visually, Recollections mirrors George’s artistic evolution—from classical realism to abstraction—through shifting textures and formats. The film honors the invisible labor of a creative life, the tension between inner truth and public narrative, and the endurance of artistic clarity in a culture of speed and spectacle.
By highlighting a lesser-known artist whose story intersects with major cultural movements, the film offers both intimate and wide-reaching appeal. 

The Team

I’ve collaborated closely with our cinematographer Tatiana Stolpovskaya since graduate school. Together we’ve made two short films; Recollections is our third project and first feature. Tatiana's work has twice been awarded grants from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media and has screened at international festivals including Pesaro, Florence Queer Festival, Some Prefer Cake, Ishinomaki, and Women Media Arts and Film Festival, where she won Best Media Arts.

Our editor, Yana Biryukova, has screened work at the Venice Biennale, Yale Art Gallery, Nice International Film Festival, San Francisco Independent, and others. She recently collaborated with Tatiana on The Karamazovs, a feature now streaming on Apple TV and Prime.