For the uninitated, the Melbourne Cup is an important horse race in Australia. In other parts of the world, you get a holiday for elections, national days, important memorial days. In Melbourne, you get the day off for the Melbourne Cup, always run on the first Tuesday in November.
For the fashion conscious, the event includes fashion shows, parades and millinery contests. There is also a lot of fancy dress vaguely above the level of men in nighties and women in sparkly hats...you know, the sort of thing worn to distract people from the fact you will be paraletic drunk by race-time. The big event takes place outside the course in the Members' Carpark where the rich people have runners take bets in to the bookies as they drink champagne and chicken from the trunks of their Rolls Royces. Oh, there is also a horse race on the day. The event has been going for about a century and a half. The first ever film shot in Australia was at the 1896 Melbourne Cup, 15 short reels on events of the day that obviously shows fashion worn by racegoers, particularly men. About half of this footage has been lost although a seventh reel has been recently uncovered, showing the wieghing-in process. It is funny how this stuff always seems to be uncovered around Meobourne Cup time but I suppose we all need to target our publicity, even film and sound archivists! Below are a couple of links to newspaper articles on the footage. If you can find your way around the Australian Film & Sound Archives site, you may find some of the footage, -C. http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24581615-12428,00.html http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24591077-2702,00.html ------------------------------------------------------------ This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
