Seeing Green

The Hunter: Tasmanian Cinema, Extinction Stories and the Problem of Human vs "Nature"

July 06, 2022 Season 2 Episode 3
Seeing Green
The Hunter: Tasmanian Cinema, Extinction Stories and the Problem of Human vs "Nature"
Show Notes

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.