Dr Karen Pearlman writes, directs and edits screen productions. She researches creative practice, cognition and feminist film histories. Karen Pearlman is a director, with Richard James Allen, of the critically acclaimed Physical TV Company. Their works have broadcast in Australia and around the world, screened at over 300 international film festivals, and received over 80 nominations or awards.

Karen's 2019 film, I want to make a film about women won Best Documentary at the 2020 St Kilda Film Festival, qualifying it for an Academy Award nomination. She was awarded Best Director at the 2020 inaugural CinefestOz Short Film Awards and Best Direction of a Documentary Short Subject at the 2020 Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG) Awards. I want to make a film about women also received the Creative Achievement Award at the 2020 Brisbane International Film Festival Short Film Awards and a Special Mention at the 2020 Sydney Film Festival’s Dendy Awards for its ‘ambitious and masterful mix of forms'. 2016 film, Woman with an Editing Bench, won the ATOM Award for Best Short Fiction. It and Karen’s 2018 documentary, After the Facts, were both honoured with Australian Screen Editors' Guild (ASE) Awards for Best Editing.

Karen is a senior lecturer in Screen Production and Practice at Macquarie University, the 2020 Australian Top Research Institution in Film. She and her colleague Dr Iqbal Barkat won the 2019 Australian Award for University Teaching. Before joining Macquarie, Karen held the post of Head of Screen Studies at AFTRS for 6 years. A leading theorist, speaker and writer on the art of film editing, she is the author of Cutting Rhythms, Intuitive Film Editing (now in its 2nd edition with Focal Press) and well-known around the world for her YouTube series The Science of Editing created with This Guy Edits.