An American mercenary, Martin David, is tasked with hunting down the last remaining Thylacine in the Tasmanian wilderness. He was put up to it by a shadowy company called Red Leaf, who want to use the animal’s genetic code to develop a potent bio-weapon. Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 film The Hunter is a dramatised meditation on extinction, starring Willemm Defoe, Frances O’Connor and Sam Neill. In this episode of Seeing Green, we explore the film’s representation of the thylacine as a casualty of humans’ mastery over nature. We also consider the very specific setting of Tasmania, as a place that has given rise to hard-fought battles over environmental conservation.
In this episode:
One-time cinema studies scholar Dr Guinevere Narraway, whose research spans eco-criticism and the representation of nature in the moving image.
And Dr Rick De Vos - adjunct research fellow in the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University, whose work explores the cultural and historical significance of anthropogenic extinction.