Richard James Allen

Richard James Allen is a director, with Karen Pearlman, of the critically acclaimed Physical TV Company. Based on unceded Gadigal and Dharug lands in Sydney, Australia, they create documentaries, dramas and dance films informed by scholarly but playful research into the history and the future potential of the cinematic medium.

An AACTA nominated, Dendy, St Kilda, Brisbane and five-time ATOM Award winning producer, actor and director, Richard's films have been commissioned or purchased for multiple broadcasts by ABC and SBS-TV, and been picked up for broadcast in China, Europe and on cable TV in the USA.

His productions have travelled to over 400 film festivals on six continents, including the most selective and prestigious dance film festivals in the world. They have garnered well over 100 awards or nominations, many have attracted grant funding or support through government or philanthropic arts funding bodies, and a number have been added to the collections of 10 major film archives around the world.

Recent films Richard has produced include: Karen Pearlman's latest pair of hybrid documentaries Impossible Image and Breaking Plates, and her earlier acclaimed An Editor's Anthology (Woman with an Editing Bench, After the Facts, and I want to make a film about women), winner of 34 thirty awards; Parish Malfitano's critically lauded psychological thriller Bloodshot Heart, winner of several awards and nominated for Best Fiction Feature Film at the ATOM Awards; and Samuel Lucas Allen's award-winning drama short CUT, and his earlier CinefestOz Best Director-nominated short, After Saturn.

In addition to his creativity as a producer, director, actor, dancer and choreographer, Richard is an acclaimed Australian poet. Richard's writing has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and online, and he has been a popular reader at multiple performing arts venues, over many years. His latest book, Text Messages from the Universe (Flying Island Books), was launched to critical acclaim in 2023. A film adaptation of this, which he wrote, choreographed and directed for The Physical TV Company, screened, in different versions, at festivals in France, Spain, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Italy, India, Australia, Nepal and Turkey. It won six awards, including Best Screenwriter of the Year Award at the Mumbai International Film Awards, and was a Finalist for Best Narrative Feature Film at the SAE ATOM Awards in Melbourne.

Richard won the Chancellor's Award for Most Outstanding PhD Thesis for his doctorate at the University of Technology, Sydney, and graduated with First Class Honours for his B.A. at Sydney University. He has taught for multiple tertiary institutions, including AFTRS, NIDA, SFS, ACPE, AMPA, CAPA, and WSU.

For more information, please see the website of The Physical TV Company: physicaltv.com.au

Filmography

	WOMAN WITH AN EDITING BENCH » Inspired by a true story, Woman with an editing bench pays homage to the creativity of Elizaveta Svilova - the unsung editor behind Dziga Vertov's 1929 documentary masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera (No 1 on the 'Sight and Sound' list of Best Documentaries of all time)...
	EDITOR'S ANTHOLOGY, AN » An anthology of three award-winning short films by Karen Pearlman ASE, about women and cinema: Woman with an editing bench, After the facts and I want to make a film about women...
	AFTER THE FACTS » In the early years of cinema, editors were usually women. This short documentary by Karen Pearlman ASE looks at how they wielded power, and how their work was made invisible...
	I WANT TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT WOMEN » A queer, speculative, documentary love letter to Russian constructivist women. It asks what the revolutionary women artists of the 1920s said, what they did, and what they might have created had it not been for Stalin's suppression...