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Visionaries: The Work of Women Filmmakers

Shirley ClarkeThinking Through Movement

By Karen Pearlman

Open access
Format

Free to read

Open access under CC-BY-NC 4.0

About this book

Examines the films of Shirley Clarke using theory from creative practice and distributed cognition

  • In-depth consideration of filmmaker Shirley Clarke’s revolutionary creative work
  • A novel feminist approach to authorship
  • A creative practice and distributed cognition framework suitable for application to the study of other films and filmmakers
  • Individual chapters useful for teaching in under-theorised areas such as dancefilm and film editing

Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement is the first film-philosophy book on “radical, pioneer, visionary" (Dargis 2013) filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the films she edited and directed.

The book draws on film analysis, archival research, dance and film theory and creative practice expertise, to think through Clarke’s work as a dancer turned multi-award-winning editor and director of dancefilm, fiction, documentary and video art.

This account of Clarke’s creative oeuvre offers the reader insight into a too long overlooked filmmaker. Its creative practice and distributed cognition framework provides tools for dismantling some of the exclusionary aspects of authorship theories and offers a novel method for analysis of films, filmmaking practices and cultures of film production.

Reviews

Only a dancer, choreographer and brilliant filmmaker could have written this superb book. Karen Pearlman’s expert research blends the history of modern dance, film history, the arts and social turbulence in America into my mother’s biography and each of her films. I know my mother would have loved this book and I love it too.
Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement revives this visionary artist for a new generation. Released forty years after Clarke finished her final film, Karen Pearlman’s groundbreaking book is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to Clarke and her films.
Pearlman explores the ways in which Clarke created her films, utilising extensive research combined with dance and film theory to create a book that is both academically important but also readable and engaging even for someone discovering the work of Clarke for the first time
Table of contents

List of Figures

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Biography and Context

2. Distributed Cognition and Creative Practice

3. Dancing Cognitions

4. Editing Thinking

5. Directing Enaction

6. Conclusions and Continuances

Index

About the author

Karen Pearlman

Dr Karen Pearlman is an Associate Professor of Screen Practice and Production at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, and co-director of The Physical TV Company. She writes, directs, and edits films and has won over 30 highly competitive awards from peak industry bodies and film festivals. Pearlman’s research into creative practice, cognition and feminist film histories is widely published and her ideas about editing are having global impact through multiple editions and translations of her book Cutting Rhythms. Like the subject of this monograph, Shirley Clarke, Pearlman had a distinguished career as a professional dancer before turning to film editing and directing.

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