After The Facts is a documentary about the power of editing to shape what we think we see and therefore what we think.

Editors are powerful.  They are also usually invisible.   Most editors in early film were women.  This short documentary looks at how they wielded power and how their work was made invisible.

“In After the Facts we have what feminist film theory never achieved in the 1970s—a theory of women’s editing practice. …After the Facts stimulates the field, challenges it to return women to the top, taking as its premise that to start with “women in the early industry” is to transform motion picture filmmaking as a historical field…After the Facts demonstrates nothing more nor less than a new theory and practice of historical research—no traditional ‘fact-finding.'”

Jane M. Gaines, review at Women Film Pioneers Project, 2020

“Pearlman’s reflexive and daring handling of her own thoughts, editing thoughts, rendered in montage and compilation, are an ecstatic conclusion to her observations and arguments throughout the film. It firmly reclaims women’s position in film making history.”

Sarah St Vincent-Welsh, “Reclaiming women’s position in film making history”, Rochford Street Review, June 09, 2020