Film Arts View

Film Arts ViewFilm Arts ViewFilm Arts View

Film Arts View

Film Arts ViewFilm Arts ViewFilm Arts View

Film Arts View features the works of awarded film artists inspiring filmmakers with innovations in film art & culture

Film Arts View

Film Arts ViewFilm Arts ViewFilm Arts View
ARTIST IN VIEW

Film Arts View features the works of awarded film artists inspiring filmmakers with innovations in film art & culture

Film Arts View

Film Arts ViewFilm Arts ViewFilm Arts View
ARTIST IN VIEW

Artist in View

KAREN PEARLMAN

Karen Pearlman

Featured film artist, highly acclaimed filmmaker and film educator Karen Pearlman, whose recent work, I want to make a film about women (the third film in her Soviet Women Filmmakers Trilogy) has won numerous awards - achieving eligibility for an academy award nomination.

About Karen Pearlman

Films

Views • Bio

Views • Bio

Karen Pearlman

FILM WORKS

Views • Bio

Views • Bio

Views • Bio

Karen Pearlman

VIEWS • INTERVIEWS • BIO

Gallery

Views • Bio

Gallery

Karen Pearlman

GALLERY

Karen Pearlman has had a major victory for women filmmakers

Karen's latest film, I want to make a film about women, (the third film in her Soviet Women Filmmakers Trilogy) has won a slew of Australia’s top awards in record time and is eligible for an Academy Award nomination.


I want to make a film about women is a documentary love letter to Russian constructivist women. It brings to life revolutionary women artists of the 1920s and speculates on what they said, did, and might have created had it not been for Stalin's suppression. 


Recently nominated for an AACTA Award, four ATOM Awards and numerous others, it has already won some of Australia’s most significant screen accolades in 2020:


• Best Documentary, St Kilda Film Festival (making it eligible for an Academy Award nomination)

• Best Direction of a Documentary Short Subject, Australian Directors' Guild (ADG) Awards

• Best Director, CinefestOz Short Film Awards

• Creative Achievement Award, Brisbane International Film Festival, Short Film Awards 

• Special Mention, Dendy Awards for Australian Shorts, Sydney Film Festival, for 'an ambitious and masterful mix of forms'


Karen's Film Trilogy has achieved over 30 highly competitive national and international awards from peak industry bodies and film festivals, including 3 for best editing, 3 for best directing and 6 for best documentary. See Filmography and Awards below.

Karen Pearlman Views • Interviews

Karen's Views • Interviews

“It can’t be just a good film,” 

says Pearlman of her approach to making cinematic projects ... 

“It has to make a new contribution to knowledge. 


So there’s been a whole lot of research questions that have led to Woman with an Editing Bench, and one is around distributed cognition. It says that you don’t just think in your brain, you think in your brain and your body and in the world, and that cognition is distributed and felt and intuitive, and it’s not just reasoning: it’s thought and action together. So I’ve been looking at film editing as an instance of distributed cognition.”

Realtime Magazine Interview with Lauren Carroll Harris


••• REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS •••


“Karen Pearlman, whose artistic career has spanned everything from dance to an indispensable textbook on film editing (Cutting Rhythms), completes an ambitious, lively trilogy on Russian women in the “Soviet montage” period with I want to make a film about women (in the Dendy Awards section). It recreates, in a suitably stylised way, the close-knit circle of creative women including montage master Esfir Shub – “cultural workers” who literally turned their kitchens into laboratories for inspiring, revolutionary art. Where [Allison] Chhorn [Plastic House] likes to linger and explore, Pearlman packs everything in tightly, kinetically; their films make an exceptional study in contrasting styles.”


Adrian Martin, “Sydney Film Festival 2020: Women On Top”, Screenhub, 2020

. . . . .


Review of Karen Pearlman Film Trilogy: Rochford Street Review

. . . . . 


Review of Karen Pearlman Film Trilogy: Compulsive Reader


Editorial: Recognising Women's Work as Creative Work


Macquarie University, The Lighthouse: 

'To Russian women, with love: trilogy celebrates forgotten filmmakers.'


Creative Editing: Svilova and Vertov's Distributed Cognition


Essay: I Return to Prague

Karen Pearlman Biography

Karen Pearlman

Karen Pearlman

Dr Karen Pearlman writes, directs and edits screen productions. She researches creative practice, cognition and feminist film histories.


Karen Pearlman is a director, with Richard James Allen, of the critically acclaimed Physical TV Company, based in Sydney, Australia.  They create dramas, documentaries and dance films informed by scholarly research into the history and future potential of the cinematic medium. Their works have broadcast in Australia and around the world, screened at over 300 international film festivals, and received over 100 awards or nominations.


Karen's 2020 film, I want to make a film about women won Best Documentary at the 2020 St Kilda Film Festival, qualifying it for an Academy Award nomination. She was awarded both Best Director at the 2020 inaugural CinefestOz Short Film Awards and Best Direction of a Documentary Short Subject at the 2020 Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG) Awards. I want to make a film about women also received the Creative Achievement Award at the 2020 Brisbane International Film Festival Short Film Awards and a Special Mention at the 2020 Sydney Film Festival’s Dendy Awards for its ‘ambitious and masterful mix of forms'.


Karen’s 2018 documentary, After the Facts, was honoured with an ASE Award for Best Editing, after its screenings at the Sydney International Film Festival, the Adelaide International Film Festival, the Perth Revelation Film Festival and the Antenna Documentary Film Festival.


Her 2016 film, Woman with an Editing Bench, won the Australia’s ATOM Award for Best Short Fiction, the Australian Screen Editors' Guild (ASE) Award for Best Editing in a Short and six other film festival awards. ... the dancer from the dance a 2014 documentary made with the Sydney dance community, and directed and edited by Karen, won the Audience Choice Awards at the World of Women (WOW) Film Festival, and was a Finalist at the Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Achievement for Dance on Screen and Finalist at Atom Awards for Best Arts Documentary. 


Karen is a senior lecturer in Screen Production and Practice at Macquarie University, the 2020 Australian Top Research Institution in Film. She and her colleague Dr Iqbal Barkat won the 2019 Australian Award for University Teaching Citation for their collaborative teaching of screen production, and Karen is proud to supervise up and coming researchers in screen studies and creative practice. Before joining Macquarie, Karen held the post of Head of Screen Studies at AFTRS for 6 years. A leading theorist, speaker and writer on the art of film editing, she is the author of Cutting Rhythms, Intuitive Film Editing (now in its 2nd edition with Focal Press) and well-known around the world for her YouTube series The Science of Editing created with This Guy Edits. 


Before taking up filmmaking, editing and film studies, Karen had a distinguished career as a professional dancer - performing on the Opera House stages of the world with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and other leading New York dance companies, as well as co-directing, with Richard James Allen, two other critically acclaimed dance companies, That Was Fast and Tasdance. She holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from UTS, MAs in filmmaking from AFTRS and UTS, and BFA in Dance from NYC’s Tisch School of the Arts.


For more information, see the website of The Physical TV Company.

Karen Pearlman's Film Trilogy

Film No.1

Film No.1

Film No.1

Woman with an Editing Bench

Film No.2

Film No.1

Film No.1

After the Facts

Film No.3

Film No.1

Film No.3

I want to make a film about women

Film No.1 in the Trilogy of Films by Karen Pearlman

Woman with an Editing Bench

Inspired by a true story, Woman with an Editing Bench celebrates Elizaveta Svilova, the editor of Dziga Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece "Man with a Movie Camera". The film reveals her fierce tenacity and fleet thinking as she dodges the bureaucracy and sustains revolutionary filmmaking in spite of Stalin’s oppression.

SEE TRAILER • WATCH THE FILM
Film No.2 in the Trilogy of Films by Karen Pearlman

After the Facts

In the early years of cinema, editors were usually women. This short documentary looks at how they wielded power, and how their work was made invisible.

WATCH THE FILM
Film No.3 in the Trilogy of Films by Karen Pearlman

I want to make a film about women

I want to make a film about women is a documentary love letter to Russian constructivist women. It brings to life revolutionary women artists of the 1920s and speculates on what they said, did, and might have created had it not been for Stalin's suppression.

WATCH THE FILM

Karen Pearlman Trailers

Woman with an Editing Bench

Directed, Written and Edited by Karen Pearlman
Producers: Lyn Norfor, Richard James Allen, Karen Pearlman
Director of Photography: Kieran Fowler
Production Designer: Bethany Ryan
Costume Designer: Anna Cahill
Music: Caitlin Yeo
Supervising Sound Editor / Mixing: Andy Wright, Sound Firm 

Copyright (c) 2016 The Physical TV Company. All rights reserved.


After the Facts

Directed, Written and Edited by Karen Pearlman
Music: Caitlin Yeo
Sound: Diego Ruiz
Produced by Karen Pearlman and Richard James Allen

Copyright (c) 2018 The Physical TV Company. All rights reserved.

I want to make a film about women

Directed, Written and Edited by Karen Pearlman

Producer: Richard James Allen, Karen Pearlman

Cast: Victoria Haralabidou, Inga Romantsova, Liliya May, Violette Ayad, Ever Sliter, Nadia Zwecker, Richard James Allen, Tug Dumbly, Jay Bailey, Clémence Dugué, Clarissa Harrison, Olivia Kingston, Billie Moffat

Music: Caitlin Yeo

Copyright (c) 2019 The Physical TV Company. All rights reserved.

Photo Gallery

    Film Arts Review

    Karen Pearlman Soviet Women Filmmakers Trilogy

    I want to make a film about women


    Drawing from the past Karen Pearlman projects cinema into the future ... while dignifying the influences of early women film editors, Karen Pearlman, a PhD of Film Editing, redefines art in her groundbreaking Trilogy of Films.


    In the final of the Trilogy, I want to make a film about women - a short Film about Russian constructivist female editors, Karen Pearlman, Writer / Director / Editor and Richard James Allen, Producer / Actor, create a genderless bias in their award-winning tale.


    The characters appear as if in a 3D world of time, colour and sets, purposeful and unaware of the future audiences Karen will bring them.


    The films’ leads and crew are remarkably in tune with Karens historical and futuristic filmmaking vision as the protagonists interact with each other, their editing equipment and the multi-dimensional sets created to showcase the story.


    With a resounding musical score behind the colourful mise-en-scène, laced with archival footage, Karen Pearlman weaves and edits film magic.


    Film Arts Review

    . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


    Woman with an Editing Bench


    Dazzling, passionate, redefines art ... sound and music that dances and dives through finely crafted metaphors and historic artefacts as the drama unfolds to its deeply moving conclusion ... a masterpiece of history and modernism combined.


    Film Arts Review

    Filmography • Awards

    Karen Pearlman: Writer/ Director/ Editor

    Karen Pearlman is a writer, director and editor and a two-time Australian Screen Editors Guild award winner. I want to make a film about women is the third in her trilogy of films about women filmmakers which have, between them, won a multitude of awards and screened at dozens of festivals. Karen is the author of ‘Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing’ and teaches filmmaking at Macquarie University. She and Richard James Allen direct The Physical TV Company.

    KAREN PEARLMAN FILMS

    I want to make a film about women [2020]

    WINNER: Best Documentary, St Kilda Film Festival 2020 (making it eligible for an Academy Award nomination)

    FINALIST: Best Short Film • FINALIST: Craft Award • FINALIST: Best Original Score, St Kilda Film Festival 2020

    WINNER: Best Director, CinefestOz Film Festival 2020 

    WINNER: Creative Achievement Award, Short Film Awards, BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Australia, 2020

    WINNER: Special Mention, Dendy Awards for Live Action Australian Short 2020

    SPECIAL MENTION: Dendy Awards, Sydney Film Festival 2020, for 'an ambitious and masterful mix of forms'

    FINALIST: Best Live Action Short and  FINALIST: Best Direction in a Short Film, Dendy Awards 2020

    WINNER: Best Direction of a Documentary short Subject, Australian Directors' Guild (ADG) Awards 2020

    FINALIST: Best Short Film, Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) awards 2020

    WINNER: Production Grant, 2019 JIFF Short Film Fund, JEWISH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Melbourne & Sydney, 2019

    WINNER: Best Director, FINALIST: Best Short Film, Inaugural CinefestOz Short Film Awards, CinefestOz Film Festival, 2020

    WINNER: Best Direction of a Documentary Short Subject, AUSTRALIAN DIRECTORS' GUILD AWARDS, Sydney, Australia, 2020

    WINNER: Silver Medal, Short Film (for Meg White), AUSTRALIAN CINEMATOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, NSW Branch, 2020

    FINALIST: Best Music in a Short Film (for Caitlin Yeo), APRA AMCOS Screen Music Awards, Sydney, Australia, 2020

    FINALIST: Best Short Film, AUSTRALIAN FILM INSTITUTE (AFI) | AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF CINEMA AND TELEVISION ARTS 2020 (AACTA) Sydney, Australia 2020

    WINNER: Best Documentary - History and WINNER: Best Docudrama, ATOM AWARDS, Melbourne, Australia, 2020

    FINALIST: Best Documentary - Short Form (30 minutes or less) - ATOM AWARDS, Melbourne, Australia, 2020

    FINALIST: Best Documentary - Biography - ATOM AWARDS, Melbourne, Australia, 2020

    WINNER: Best Short: Pride Parade, Section: Shorts Spotlight SCAD SAVANNAH FESTIVAL, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2020

    OFFICIAL SELECTION: VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, British Columbia, Canada, 2020

    WINNER: Best Doco Short, SYDNEY WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Sydney, Australia, 2020

    FINALIST: Best Director, Best FINALIST: Australian Film,  FINALIST: Best Actress, SYDNEY WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, 2020

    WINNER: ‘Best Shorts of 2020’ at Bunbury Fringe 2020

    WINNER: Jury’s Citation Award, THOMAS EDISON BLACK MARIA FILM FESTIVAL, 2021

    WINNER: Best Director, WIFT V-FEST Online Women’s Film Festival, Brisbane, Australia 2021

    FINALIST: Best Documentary, FINALIST: Best Editor, WIFT V-FEST Online Women’s Film Festival, Brisbane, Australia 2021

    WINNER: Special Jury Mention – Short, SEBASTOPOL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL, California, USA 2021

    WINNER: Honorable Mention, EXPERIMENTAL FILM FORUM, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2021

    WINNER: Award of Excellence: Special Mention ~ Documentary Short, THE IMPACT DOC AWARDS, California, USA, 2021

    FINALIST: Best Production for a Short Film (Valentina Iastrebova), Best Costume Design for a Short Film or Music Video (Valentina Serebrennikova), AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION DESIGN GUILD AWARDS (APDG Awards)

    WINNER: Best Short Non-Fiction Film Award, MULTICULTURAL FILM FESTIVAL, Melbourne Australia, 2021

    WINNER: Best Director, Best Production, First Women Film Festival, Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran, 2022

    . . . . . . . . . . . 

    After the Facts [2018]

    WINNER Best Editing, Open Content, Australian Screen Editors Guild (ASE) Ellie Awards 2018

    . . . . . . . . . . . 

    Woman with an Editing Bench [2016]

    WINNER Best Short Fiction, SAE ATOM Awards 2016 

    WINNER Best Editing in a Drama - Short Film, Australian Screen Editors Guild (ASE) Ellie 2016

    WINNER Best Female Actress, Auckland International Film Festival 2016 

    WINNER Best Music Score, Auckland International Film Festival 2016 

    WINNER Silver REMI Award, Historical Short Productions Worldfest Houston International Film Festival 2017 

    WINNER Special Jury Prize for Best Short Film, Reel Sydney Festival of World Cinema 2017 

    WINNER Grand Jury Awards, Best Short, Honorable Mention Dances with Films 2017

    WINNER Best Editing, Scruffy City Film & Music Festival 2017

    . . . . . . . . . . . 

    ...the dancer from the dance [2014]

    WINNER Audience Choice Awards, WOW (World of Women) Film Festival 2014
    FINALIST Best Documentary - Arts, IP Awareness ATOM (Australian Teachers of Media) Awards 2014
    FINALIST Best Music, Documentary, APRA AMCOS AGSC (Australian Guild of Screen Composers) Screen Music Awards 2014

    FINALIST Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film / New Media, Australian Dance Awards 2014 for 'a finely structured documentary exploring the motivations and spirit of dance and dancers, giving an inspiring and intimate look into the creativity, passion and processes of dancers'.

    . . . . . . . . . . . 

    Other films

    For more information visit www.karenpearlman.net or see the website of The Physical TV Company.

    Company Bio

    Physical TV Company

    Co-Artistic Directors: Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman.


    The Physical TV Company (Artistic Directors: Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman) is Australia's premier company for the production and distribution of screen dance, dance film, video dance or dance on camera...we make "stories told by the body". Our award-winning shorts and feature films combine the finest filmmakers, crews and production values with dance, dancers and ideas about making moving pictures that move. Thought-provoking, engaging and rich in rhythms and images, Physical TV's award-winning physical films regularly screen nationally and internationally at Festivals, on TV and online. More recently Physical TV is bringing its kinetic imagination into the movement of story through drama, documentary and transmedia projects.


    Richard and Karen have worked internationally as film and video producers and artistic directors of dance companies. They have created a body of dance on screen work which has been shown at over 300 Dancefilm and Film Festivals and other screenings around the world, and been produced in collaboration with and/or broadcast in Australia on ABC TV, SBS TV, and Southern Cross Television, and overseas on TV Slovenia, KMTV, China, and MNN, USA. These productions have won many awards, nominations and commendations for themselves and their collaborators. For more information, or to order Physical TV Streaming Links and Books, please visit: www.physicaltv.com.au

    About Richard James Allen

    Richard James Allen

    Richard James Allen is a director, with Karen Pearlman, of the critically acclaimed Physical TV Company.  Based in Sydney, Australia, they create documentaries, dramas and dance films informed by scholarly research into the history and the future potential of the cinematic medium. An AACTA nominated, Dendy, St Kilda, Brisbane and five-time ATOM Award winning producer, Richard’s films have been commissioned or purchased for multiple broadcasts by ABC and SBS-TV, and been picked up for broadcast in China, Europe and on cable TV in the USA. His productions have travelled to over 300 film festivals on six continents, including all of the most selective and prestigious dance film festivals in the world. They have garnered well over 100 awards or nominations, many have attracted grant funding or support through government or philanthropic arts funding bodies, and a number have been added to the collections of 10 major film archives around the world. 


    Recent films Richard has produced include: Karen Pearlman’s acclaimed Soviet Women Filmmakers Trilogy (Woman with an Editing Bench, After the Facts, and I want to make a film about women), winner of over thirty awards; Parish Malfitano’s critically lauded psychological thriller Bloodshot Heart, winner of several awards and nominated for Best Fiction Feature Film at the ATOM Awards; and Samuel Lucas Allen’s CinefestOz Best Director-nominated short, After Saturn.


    In addition to his creativity as a producer, director, writer, actor and dancer, Richard is an acclaimed Australian poet.  His first novel, More Lies was published in 2021; his eleventh book of poetry, Text Messages from the Universe, is forthcoming in 2023.  He also has an extensive track record of creating critically lauded works for the stage and, together with Karen Pearlman, edited a landmark national anthology of writing for performance for Currency Press.


    Richard won the Chancellor’s Award for Most Outstanding PhD Thesis for his doctorate at the University of Technology, Sydney, and graduated with First Class Honours for his B.A. at Sydney University. He has taught for multiple tertiary institutions, including AFTRS, NIDA, SFS, ACPE, AMPA, CAPA, WSU. For more information, please see the website of The Physical TV Company: http://physicaltv.com.au


    Film Trailers

    Digital Afterlives

    Cast: Richard James Allen Directors: Richard James Allen & Karen Pearlman Writer/Choreographer: Richard James Allen 

    Director of Photography: Michi Marosszeky 

    Editor/Visual Effects Designer: Karen Pearlman 

    A Physical TV Company Production


    TAGLINE: An existential disaster comedy.
    SYNOPSIS: A man in all white in an infinite black space is awakened by the bombastic strains of Franz Liszt’s “Totentanz” (“The Dance of the Dead”).

    Bloodshot Heart Feature - View Trailer

    Starring: Richard James Allen, Dina Panozzo, Emily David

    Written Directed by: Parish Malfitano

    Produced by: Martin Thorne, Richard James Allen, Parish Malfitano 

    A Bloodshot Pictures, Physical TV Company and Fieldstar Pictures Production


    TAGLINE: Follow your heart to the depths.
    SYNOPSIS: A mild-mannered driving instructor living with his manipulative and jealous mother descends into obsession and psychosis when a tenant half his age moves in. As the lines between reality and fantasy twist and merge, he hatches a violent plan to win her love.


    VIEW FILM: https://athome.ritzcinemas.com.au/film/bloodshot-heart/

    Links to External Sites

    Featured on Screen Australia

    https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/c/the-physical-tv-company-pty-ltd/7691/

    Karen Pearlman Website

    http://www.karenpearlman.net/

    Physical TV Company

    https://physicaltv.com.au/

    Contact Us

    Contact Us

    For questions about the featured artist or for an electronic publicity kit contact us

    Film Arts View

    For more information about film arts view

    Get in Touch!

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

    Film Arts View

    Copyright © 2022 Film Arts View - All Rights Reserved.

    supporting the arts