Filmmaking was a family affair for writer and director Paulette McDonagh. During the 1920s and 30s in Sydney, McDonagh worked with her sisters Isabel and Phyllis to make some of the most acclaimed silent Australian films. Their first film, Those Who Love (1926), was funded by their family and hailed as a “dazzling triumph” by publication Everyone’s.
Influenced by Hollywood melodramas and German Expressionism, the sisters’ films featured emotionally honest characters and broke with traditional gender norms. Fox Films even offered McDonagh and her sisters the chance to make movies in Hollywood, but they decided they “would end up very small fish in a big pond” so stayed in Australia, where they worked up until the mid-1930s.
Learn how the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) restored Paulette McDonagh's The Cheaters. Video via the NFSA YouTube channel.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
On display until
16 February 2031
ACMI: Gallery 1
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
P180324
Curatorial section
The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Pictures → MI-04. Materiality → MI-04-C01
Object Types
2D Object
Exhibition Prop
Photographic print/Pictorial
Materials
graphic