Film Festival 09 - Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land
Australia 2009, 104m
Director: Jonathan auf de Heide
In English and Gaelic, with English subtitles
The magnificent forest and riverscapes of Tasmania murmur their
indifference as one of the most grimly resonant of white Australian
settlement stories unfolds in this intensely impressive first film.
Eight thieves of Irish, English and Scottish birth, all city boys,
escape a convict camp with scant knowledge of bush survival. One,
Alexander Pearce, survives. When he claims that he stayed alive by
eating the others, the authorities conclude that he's covering up
for his escaped mates. Director Jonathan auf der Heide, co-writer
and lead actor Oscar Redding and an ensemble of colleagues from
Melbourne's fertile independent theatre scene, have imagined events
with scrupulous intelligence, psychological acuity and an almost
anthropological attention to detail. Eschewing genre thrills, they
invest the savagery of the 'fatal shore' with specific lived
experience so raw and sad you sense an urge for national exorcism
190 years later.
www.vandiemensland-themovie.com
