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Eating and Othering in Jonathan auf der Heide's Van Diemen's Land

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 00:14 authored by Narraway, G
Primarily based on convict Alexander Pearce’s four confessions, Jonathan auf der Heide’s 2009 feature film Van Diemen’s Land is a retelling of the true story of the escape of eight convicts in 1822 from the isolated Macquarie Harbour Penal Station on Sarah Island in Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land). Infamously, unable to sustain themselves in the wilderness, the men resort to eating one another until only one convict, Pearce, is left standing. The film’s structure is ultimately binary, split equally between the convicts’ at times intimate and predominantly antagonistic relationships as they desperately head overland towards Hobart Town, and the sublime environment that both psychologically and pictorially consumes them. Although not technically “ecocinema” (2), Van Diemen’s Land invites an ecocritical consideration of both nonhuman and human nature. In the first instance, a great deal of screen time is devoted exclusively to nonhuman nature in the film and its centrality to the narrative is signalled by the long take that opens the film: an extended travelling shot of the Tasmanian bush and the Gordon River which is then interposed at several points in the narrative. In the second instance, the film, as a tale about cannibalism, inevitably foregrounds the eating, desiring body. Moreover, Van Diemen’s Land brings the nonhuman and human into interrelationship by constantly affiliating the two.

History

Publication title

Senses of Cinema

Volume

65

Issue

December 2012

Article number

6

Number

6

Pagination

Online

ISSN

1443-4059

Publisher

RMIT University

Place of publication

Melbourne

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in language, communication and culture

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