Karen Pearlman in Breaking Plates – Photo Gary Compton

Breaking Plates, directed by Karen Pearlman and produced by Richard James Allen, had its Australian Premiere last Saturday February 8, 2025, at Dendy Cinemas Newtown, as part of the Best Australian Shorts program of the Antenna Documentary Film Festival.

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Karen Pearlman is a film scholar and an Associate Professor in screen Production and Practice at Macquarie University. Pearlman is well-known for her incredible creative productions, excelling in rhythm, editing and affect as the result of her career as a professional dancer as well as choreographing. This talented filmmaker co-directs The Physical TV Company with the well-known and brilliant poet and dancer Richard James Allen.

Breaking Plates is a dramatic silent film embellished by stunning dances which takes the observer to the past through old films of revolutionary women, films made between 1896 and 1926. These women from the old films converse with filmmakers of the present day.

One of the questions raised by the film is: “why do today’s women appear to be more constrained than those depicted in the films of years ago?” Other questions raised were: “what happened to the revolution?”, “is it still possible?” and “what do those women of the past have to say to today’s women?”

The result of the conversations between the contemporary women filmmakers with the revolutionary women from the past was fascinating which led the modern filmmakers to recreate their pranks and amusing behaviour.

It was captivating to see Pearlman inserting herself in the film orchestrating the action, setting challenges and re-enactments. Violette Ayad (actor/playwright) and other actors re-enact different scenes from the old films, creating riots, havoc, pandemonium … so much fun, that the audience roared with laughter.

As well as Violette Ayad, Richard James Allen, Emma Watkins, Julie-Anne Long, Jadzea Allen and Karen Pearman aappear in Breaking Plates. Allen also brought, his acting and dancing skills to the film, making his movements appear like he was floating in the scene. It was impressive the energy displayed by the actors’ actions fighting dangerous machines and explosions and, of course, breaking plates. A big part of this film is dancing and a large corps of dancers participated in the film.

After the film, I talked to a few friends who had seen it and asked them what they took out from the film and what they learned. It was interesting to note the similarity of the answers. One said: “what counts is not what you say, but what you do”. Another said: “keep moving, don’t stop at anything and don’t forget to have fun”. And another added: “break rules as well as plates.”

… And what did I think? Well, being a post-post-modern writer, I was fascinated by the courage of Pearlman and left me thinking that we can learn a lot from the past and I love the principle that ‘if we want to tell different stories we must tell stories differently”.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in Breaking Plates, an incredible piece of filmic art.

 – Beatriz Copello

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Breaking Plates won Best Short Documentary at the 2025 Antenna Documentary Film Festival.  It is screening at the Athens International Film + Video Festival in Ohio on April 8; and at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival in Texas  on April 26, 2025, where it has been nominated for a Remi Award.  Further individual screenings will follow at film festivals in Australia and around the world.  On April 5, 2025, a new feature-length program of shorts, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, premiered at Kennington Bioscope’s Silent Film Weekend at The Cinema Museum in London.  It will screen next at the Milwaukee Film Historic Cinemas in Wisconsin on April 15 , 2025; at The Trylon Cinema, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 17, 2025; at La Cinémathèque française in Paris, France, on June 14, 2025; and at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on June 15, 2025; with more screenings to follow, including at Indiana University Cinema, in Bloomington, on September 29, 2025.

Dr Beatriz Copello, is an award-winning writer and a former member of NSW Writers Centre Management Committee. She writes poetry, reviews, fiction and plays. Her poetry books include Women Souls and Shadows, Meditations At the Edge of a Dream, Flowering Roots, Under the Gums Long Shade, Witches Women and Words and Lo Irrevocable del Halcon and Renacer en Azul (In Spanish). Other books include Copello are: A Call to the Stars, Forbidden Steps Under the Wisteria and Beyond the Moons of August (Her Doctoral Thesis). Copello’s poetry has been published in numerous literary journals in Australia and overseas and her critical work has appeared in The Compulsive Reader, NSW Writers Centre, Australian Society of Women Writers and Rochford Street Review. Her latest collection of poetry, The Book of Jeremiah, Ginninderra Press 2024.