Dr Karen Pearlman, an award-winning filmmaker, author, and professional dancer, recently joined Macquarie University's Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies as a lecturer in screen production. Teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, her students not only benefit from her technical expertise but also her wealth of industry experience.
Karen believes that the course she teaches her students will not only provide them with the core capacities they will need for screen media industries such as digital literacy, entrepreneurship, collaboration skills and creative and critical thinking, but can be applied to almost any other industry they may find themselves working in throughout their career.
When teaching her students, Karen says, "I encourage students to think of themselves as already part of the screen industry, to recognise that the collaborative teams they build now may be their professional colleagues for life and that their levels of achievement will be in direct proportion to their own levels of curiosity, engagement and effort."
Karen's experience as a filmmaker includes her role as co-director of the multi-award winning Physical TV Company, a dance film company that develops and produces works within and across the media of dance, film, literature and new media. Her most recent film, the half hour documentary "...the dancer from the dance" was a finalist for an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Screen, an ATOM Award for Best Arts Documentary, and an Australian Screen Composer Guild Award for Best Music in a Documentary.
Prior to joining Macquarie, Karen was the Head of Screen Studies at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) for 6 years, and between 2009 and 2010 was President of the Australian Screen Editors Guild.
Besides her professional work as a filmmaker, she is a published author of various books and academic essays and articles on screen culture and creative processes. She has also had an international career as a professional dancer with a dance company based in New York City, and been a director of two dance companies.
In addition to her teaching, Karen is an active researcher and member of the Department's Creative Ecologies Lab (CELab), which brings creative researchers in the Department and their collaborators together to question, engage and examine. Her research interests are in creative processes, particularly writing and editing, cognitive studies of the moving image, and screendance. She is currently an investigator on an Australian Research Council/Australia Council funded research project which is asking if placing artists from fields other than games in residence with interactive entertainment companies will result in greater innovation.
Interested in studying media, creative arts and communication? Learn more about our undergraduate and postgraduate degree from our courses website.
