Breaking Plates and picking up the pieces: creative research with archival films and fragments

As part of the GATES project, a talk will be presented by Karen PEARLMAN, Associate Professor at School of Communication, Society and Culture, Macquarie University and GATES Senior Fellow.

Breaking Plates and picking up the pieces presents some of the research processes  and ideas involved in working with archival and contemporary media as practiced by writer/director/editor and screen academic Karen Pearlman and producer/performer Richard James Allen. The presentation includes discussion of Pearlman’s research program in creative practice and feminist film histories; images and fragments of the new film Pearlman and Allen are working on here at the MaCI, and a screening of their last award winning, 25-minute film Breaking Plates. (The Physical TV Company, 2025)

Breaking Plates is a raucous documentary about the not-so-silent women of the silent film era that entangles “sober” documentary form with comedic and chaotic archive clips and contemporary re-animations. It asks the cross-dressed cowgirls and slapstick comediennes of early cinema: what did you know?  What can we learn?  And why are we so much more polite? This discussion and screening will put to the test Pearlman’s proposition that research can be fast moving and comedic and still be an effective catalyst for reflection and insight. It will enact the core feminist principle that if we want to tell different stories, we have to tell stories differently. 
 

Karen PEARLMAN writes, directs and edits screen productions. She researches creative practice, distributed cognition and feminist film histories. Karen’s short films about historical women editors (2016, 2018 & 2020) have won 34 competitive awards. Her film Breaking Plates was awarded ‘Best Short Documentary’ at the 2025 Antenna International Film Festival for “... a playful invitation to consider very serious questions of feminism and voice, as well as dynamics of structure and agency” (Jury citation). Karen was accredited by the Australian Screen Editors (ASE) Guild in 2024.  A 5-time ASE Best Editing Award nominee, and 2 time winner, Karen is the author of Cutting Rhythms, Creative Film Editing, (3rd edition 2025) which draws on her background as a professional dancer to frame editing as a choreographic art. Her 2025 monograph Shirley Clarke Thinking through Movement (EUP) offers a unique,