File(s) not publicly available
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, GPrimarily 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 CinemaVolume
65Issue
December 2012Article number
6Number
6Pagination
OnlineISSN
1443-4059Publisher
RMIT UniversityPlace of publication
MelbourneRepository Status
- Restricted