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Published on March 11, 2026
Photos ©The Physical TV Company
Coming to Cinema Village for the 13th edition of the Socially Relevant Film Festival New York Sunday, March 15, 2026, at 7:25 pm.
Producer/Writer/Director/Editor: Karen Pearlman
Actress: Violette Ayad
Company: Physical TV Company & La Briqueterie-CDCN du Val-de-Marne
Producer/Actor Richard James Allen
Cinematographer: Justine Kerriganacs
For Tickets to the Festival, Click Here
During COVID, I became addicted to watching the brazen women of Pre-Code movies --those films made before the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines were issued in 1934. Karen Pearlman, who danced with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in the company's early days, is similarly drawn to cinema's first nasty women: "Before narrative conventions were ironclad, there were so many more ways to behave," she writes.
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Pearlman returns to her native city to present her delightful Breaking Plates, a raucous documentary about the not-so-silent women of the silent film era, as part of the 13th edition of the Socially Relevant Film Festival New York on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at 7:25 pm.
Pearlman says, "Breaking Plates puts early films on the screen, and then we talk to the characters in them, reanimate their antics, and emulate their mayhem moves. As we wear their clothes and battle their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, we learn to wield humor as a weapon against the structures that contain us." (Note also to dance filmmakers, seek out Pearlman's fascinating book, CUTTING RHYTHMS, Shaping the Film Edit, published by Focal Press, 2009.)
Blending documentary, comedy, dance, and inquiry, Pearlman playfully challenges our self-image by juxtaposing the early clips of rebellious maids with those of today's young women. The women in the silents appear wild and unbridled, whereas the dancers in Pearlman's film seem mildly subservient. Yet, her subtext is subversive. "What happened to our revolution? Violating realism is a victimless crime!" (Her charming partner, Australian producer/actor Richard James Allen, appears in her film as a thinly disguised Charlie Chaplin, with a wider moustache.)
In line with the festival's mission to promote positive change, this film has an unusual structure, an experimental approach to goad us into action, to go ahead and shock someone, break plates, declare the end of one era and the beginning of another. Breaking Plates also reminds dancers to explore the choreographic genius in silent films. While many films have recently come out about the innovative dancer Loie Fuller, such as "Obsessed with Light," few nudge the audience to explore early cinema for its spontaneity and its rough and tumble freedom, as inspiration to choreographers.
Violette Ayad and Karen Pearlman; Photo: Blandine Vives ©The Physical TV Company
Also available online after March 16, 2026, through the Socially Relevant Film Festival is The Sky Was on Fire: Ballet and War in Ukraine, directed by Jonathan Maricle and Joan Finn and produced by Julie Meyer for Adrenaline Films. As Russian forces seized Mariupol and Kharkiv, they bombed the theaters, operas, and museums—targeting and killing artists. But the dancers, like the soldiers of Ukraine, refuse to surrender. As prima ballerina Khrystyna Shyshpor asks, "If everyone leaves, who will stay and dance?"
