Breaking Plates

Move aside Wonder Woman. Drop the pretence, Doris Day. The film images that confine women to a ‘realistic’ role as housewife, nag, babe, or bitch have defined us for too long. Especially because in early cinema, before narrative conventions were iron-clad, there were so many more ways to behave. For decades, movies were made almost exclusively by men in Europe and the USA after 1925. So, the slapstick comediennes and cross-dressed cowgirls of early cinema, who were wild, powerful, rude, funny, and utterly out of male control, got forgotten, or worse, erased. ‘Breaking Plates’ collaborates with the curators of ‘Cinema’s First Nasty Women’ to bring them back into view. ‘Breaking Plates’ puts early films on the screen and then we talk to the characters in them, re-animate their antics, emulate their mayhem moves. As we wear their clothes and battle their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, we learn to wield humour as a weapon against the structures that contain us.

'Breaking Plates' is a raucous documentary about the not-so-silent women of the silent film era. It defiantly asserts the principle that if we want to tell different stories we have to tell stories differently.

"'Breaking Plates', is as powerful as it is ambitious, leaning into the processes of filmmaking and its historical legacy to raise questions about the creative process, female agency, and the fragility of the structures that contain all of us." [Maggie Ball, 'The Compulsive Reader' 20 Jan. 2025]
"story, essay, dance, montage. And thoroughly metaleptic... something to celebrate" ['Film Critic: Adrian Martin' 01 Feb. 2025]
"The take-away from 'Breaking Plates' is to keep moving, metaphorically and physically. Be steadfast in your thinking and don’t forget what the past can teach. And also this: have fun; be bold; find joy." ['Deborah Jones: Follow Spot' 05 Feb. 2025]