LOGLINE
A raucous documentary about the not so silent women of the silent film era, ‘Breaking Plates’ defiantly asserts the principle that if we want to tell different stories, we have to tell stories differently.

SYNOPSIS
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 ironclad, 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. 

ADVANCE QUOTES ABOUT ‘BREAKING PLATES’:

“There are some amazing, never seen before, never tried before, things in the film. Bravo!” Alan Berliner, award-winning documentary filmmaker (‘Letter to the Editor’, ‘Wide Awake’, ‘The Sweetest Sound’)

“Utterly…utterly fascinating. My head is reeling! You are onto something extraordinary here. …Production values, choreography, performance. All of it! And best of all, revisiting those not so silent women of the silent era.” Sue Maslin, OA, multi-award-winning producer (‘Brazen Hussies;, ‘The Dressmaker’, ‘Hunt Angels’, ‘Japanese Story’)

“A complete joy, ‘Breaking Plates’ is an interrogative, celebratory, and cheekily riotous exploration of women and cinema.” Bill Mousoulis (‘My Darling in Stirling’, ‘Songs of Revolution’, ‘Wild and Precious’, ‘Desire’)

ABOUT THE SILENT FILM CLIPS:

‘Breaking Plates’ is an international collaboration with the curators of the ground-breaking four DVD/Blu-Ray set ‘Cinema’s First Nasty Women’. The rambunctious 99 films that inspired ‘Breaking Plates’ were made between 1896 to 1926 and brought together by Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi into a collection ‘The New York Times’ describes as:

“A mind-expanding endeavor … a triumph … These are not the polite, weak sisters of cinema — there’s a lot of muscle and mischief to go with those long skirts!” Manohla Dargis, ‘The New York Times’, 19 August, 2022.