Jonathan auf der Heide may not be the easiest name to remember, but make a mental note of it. File it away for future reference, because this young Tasmanian director has chosen for his first feature film a story so dark and grim, a tale so horrific, that you will want to keep a 'watching brief' on his career to see what he follows Van Diemen's Land up with.
The film first saw light in an early short as Jonathan's Victorian College of the Arts graduation film called, Hell's Gates, which went on to be named Best Student Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008.
Van Diemen's Land, as every adult Australian would know, is the first name given to Tasmania by British authorities during the early years of white settlement. A dreaded penal colony, with a fearsome reputation, Van Diemen's Land saw more than its share of horror and barbarism meted out to the convicts unlucky enough to end up there.
This film, set in 1882, tells the 'true' story of eight convicts who escape from a working party and head out across the Tasmanian wilderness in search of Macquarie Harbour (the Hell's Gates in the title of the original short), where they believe a ship will be waiting to carry them away from the island.
One of the escapees is Alexander Pearce, a Gaelic speaking Irishman. Pearce, was in fact, the only convict to survive the harrowing trek across Tasmania's wild mountainous peaks and valleys, and following his recapture, told a horrifying tale of murder and cannibalism that still echoes and shocks more than a hundred years after the original events took place.
Filmed entirely on location in Tasmania and Victoria's Otway Ranges, the film has a dark foreboding quality about it that doesn't let up across its entire 100 minute length. Almost all of the colour has been leached out of the film leaving almost nothing else but drab olive greens and grays. We never get a glimpse of clear blue, open sky. The air is constantly heavy with rain and damp, and one can only imagine what these convicts from England, Scotland and Ireland must have thought as they set out on foot to cross one of the harshest and most forbidding environments on earth.
The film is hauntingly narrated by Pearce, who peppers his comments with poetical insights into the human psyche that are often as shocking as they are profound.
"I've looked up at God looking down", intones Pearce in his native Gaelic, "He dances with an axe in his hand." Or this: "Let God have his Heaven. I am blood." Van Diemen's Land is a stunning debut feature from one of Australia's newest and youngest directors. If this film is any indication of the quality of writing and directing coming out of our film schools today, it augers very well for the future of the Australian film industry as a whole.
The film first saw light in an early short as Jonathan's Victorian College of the Arts graduation film called, Hell's Gates, which went on to be named Best Student Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008.
Van Diemen's Land, as every adult Australian would know, is the first name given to Tasmania by British authorities during the early years of white settlement. A dreaded penal colony, with a fearsome reputation, Van Diemen's Land saw more than its share of horror and barbarism meted out to the convicts unlucky enough to end up there.
This film, set in 1882, tells the 'true' story of eight convicts who escape from a working party and head out across the Tasmanian wilderness in search of Macquarie Harbour (the Hell's Gates in the title of the original short), where they believe a ship will be waiting to carry them away from the island.
One of the escapees is Alexander Pearce, a Gaelic speaking Irishman. Pearce, was in fact, the only convict to survive the harrowing trek across Tasmania's wild mountainous peaks and valleys, and following his recapture, told a horrifying tale of murder and cannibalism that still echoes and shocks more than a hundred years after the original events took place.
Filmed entirely on location in Tasmania and Victoria's Otway Ranges, the film has a dark foreboding quality about it that doesn't let up across its entire 100 minute length. Almost all of the colour has been leached out of the film leaving almost nothing else but drab olive greens and grays. We never get a glimpse of clear blue, open sky. The air is constantly heavy with rain and damp, and one can only imagine what these convicts from England, Scotland and Ireland must have thought as they set out on foot to cross one of the harshest and most forbidding environments on earth.
The film is hauntingly narrated by Pearce, who peppers his comments with poetical insights into the human psyche that are often as shocking as they are profound.
"I've looked up at God looking down", intones Pearce in his native Gaelic, "He dances with an axe in his hand." Or this: "Let God have his Heaven. I am blood." Van Diemen's Land is a stunning debut feature from one of Australia's newest and youngest directors. If this film is any indication of the quality of writing and directing coming out of our film schools today, it augers very well for the future of the Australian film industry as a whole.