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The Cheaters: The Story of a Dress
Title:
The Cheaters: The Story of a Dress
Year
2015
Author Meg Stewart tells the story of a dress worn by Isabel McDonagh in the classic Australian film The Cheaters (1929). She donated the dress, originally owned by her great-aunt Kathleen Coen, to the NFSA in 2015.
The Cheaters was one of the earliest Australian films made by a team of female filmmakers. The McDonagh sisters - Paulette (director), Phyllis (art director) and actress Isabel (billed as Marie Lorraine) - made the film as a silent movie in 1929. It arrived in cinemas after the release of the first talking pictures and the McDonagh sisters converted it to a part-talkie and later to a full-talkie film in 1931.
Stream NFSA Restores: The Cheaters on NFSA Player
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.