All Active on the New Rex Front

Fundraising for the new Rex Cinema has kicked off, fittingly enough, with a film.

Radius Gallery in Hepburn Springs hosted a Flicks and Feast evening with an impromptu boost.

Keen movie-goer and Rex supporter Dr Charlie Qi, of Qi Wellness in Daylesford, was involved in planning the Radius event and laid on a spectacular vegetarian Asian feast beforehand.

The film was a delightful, animated fairy tale about the ``Clocks’’, a family of “little people”  living in a doll’s house who steal (or borrow)  goods from the humans’  home. All is well until humans discover the family’s daughter and they flee for their lives. The message of the movie is about living together with nature in peace and harmony, a concept close to Dr Charlie’s heart.

After this start, a host of other fundraising and promotional moves are in the works. They include raffles, a Christmas event, patron packages, business sponsorship, merchandise sales, such as vintage movie posters, t-shirts and badges, and a dinner.

The Rex has a remarkable history of money-raising, as record at the Daylesford Museum. The cinema’s  founder, Aubrey Moulden Christie, began with weekly then twice weekly plus “weekly occasions” pictures at the old Drill Hall in Bridport St,  now the Daylesford Fire  Station. Next he bought an old hotel in Vincent St and began building the Rex, securing more than ten thousand pounds, a massive amount for the time, to build a “Spanish colonial theatrical” style cinema.

More money was needed to strengthen the foundations and flooring after old mining works caused some cave-ins.

The Rex opened on Boxing Day 1929, showing an early version of “The Student Prince”, dubbed with synchronised sound before the modern integrated soundtrack, and before Mario Lanza..

One of the first small theatres beyond Ballarat, Bendigo and Melbourne to have CinemaScope in 1954, the Rex was badly hit by the local  advent of TV in 1960-61.  After 34 years operation the Rex was shut by Aubrey Moulton Christie’s son Max in May 1963, only to start again on a small scale, being run by dedicated volunteers between 2012 and 2016.

For further information, comments or interviews please contact Jules McDonald, Daylesford Cinema Group President,  0400 455 993. This article was also published on the Wombat Post.