Filmmaker Jonathan Auf Der Heide grew up hearing the disturbing stories of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict. In 1822, Pearce and seven fellow convicts escaped from Macquarie Harbour, a place of ultra banishment and punishment, only to find a world less forgiving.. the Australian wilderness. The men ultimately turned on one another to survive.

A couple of decades after first hearing about the cannibal-convict, VCA grad Der Heide's decided to bring Pearce's disturbing story to the big screen. CLINT MORRIS hears about the rather painless effort of bringing Van Diemen's Land to the big screen.

I've been reading your website - it's great; good lot of information about the film there.

Thanks. But nobody is reading it [Laughs]. They tell me, ‘Just keep blogging'. But what's the point of blogging if nobody's reading? What's funny is, before blogs were fashionable, my housemate and I had a website called ahousenearyou.com, and it was getting 50,000 hits a month. It was nuts - I use to get stopped on the street, I had girls approach me... it was madness. And then you make a feature film and no one cares! [Laughs]

That's the Australian film industry for you.  Was it a hard slog getting the film up?

No, it was actually a lot of fun getting it up - and relatively easy. I'd made a short film, as my VCA graduating piece, called Hell's Gates. It was a 21-minute film. And so we had that as part of our pitch. [Producer] Maggie Miles, [Actor] Oscar Redding, and myself shopped [Van Diemen's Land] around. We got some independent finance but a lot of the money in it is our own. Friends and family also helped - my Dad won tattslotto, which also helped!

Wow. Fabulous!

Yeah, he won like a hundred grand, and he gave up thirty to go towards the film. So that contribution got the ball rolling. We weren't after a massive budget, because most of the people involved in the film were happy just to donate their time. So getting it up was as painless as I've heard of.

So how long ago did you decide to do the film?

About twelve years ago. I decided I wanted to do the film before I went to film school. I did a short version of it, Hell's Gates - which tells the story of Alexander Pearce up until the first murder - as my third year film. After I graduated VCA, it was about a year before we got the feature version up. It was a really quick turnaround from short to feature. The VCA says it's the quickest that's ever happened.

Where's the interest in Alexander Pearce come from?

I'm Tasmanian, so I heard a lot of stories about him growing up. I remember doing a tour of the Sarah Islands, and the Gordon River, and it was on that day that I first heard the story. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these poor European convicts, trying to survive in this foreboding, impenetrable forest. So harsh'. And the Alexander Pearce story is the perfect example of the white fellas coming in to the country and just turning on themselves - resorting to violence, rather than trying to adapt to the landscape. It's always stayed with me that story. And considering there hasn't been a convict story since 1927, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do one.

Is everything true in the film? Or did you have to exaggerate a little bit for entertainment purposes?

There's definitely no exaggeration in the film. We wanted it to be a subtle as possible. We followed Alexander Pearce's confessions down to the letter. There are a few little things that have been changed just for brevity [sic] - the escape was a little cleaner than what it was in real life, only because I wanted to get to the story quicker. I wanted to get to the man gist of the story, and to that that Lord of the Flies/Deliverance-style thing, where there's only one man standing. And there was no need to embellish it anyway, because the confessions themselves were pretty intense.

Yeah, bloody disturbing.

It's hard to believe it's a true-story. I don't think people are necessarily looking at it as one either, because it has such a perfect structure for a fictional story - eight go in, one comes out. There have been scripts going around about Pearce for years, but most of them make him out to be a bloodthirsty monster or some sort of psychopath, but I wanted to avoid that.

Well, that's what they did in that shitty ‘'Dying Breed'' movie..

I think Pearce was only in it for a minute - the opening sequence - but yeah, Dying Breed is based more on the mythology of the Alexander Pearce stories.

I think what's good about your film is that it's got a lot of fresh faces in it - it's not a stock Aussie roster, or a ‘Who's Who' of the local industry.

Yeah, no Samuel Johnson in my film [Laughs] - I wanted audiences to see these guys as the characters, as the convicts, and I think by casting recognizable faces in the main roles you'd be taking something away from the movie. It wouldn't play as true. I just wanted the film to be as authentic as possible. I also thought it was a good opportunity to use all these great actors that just don't get film work. It's not that they're not great actors, they are - they're working constantly - it's just that they're not the leading man or go-to people. And they're great actors too - very determined. They spent six weeks hopping in and out of freezing cold water, trekking through the snow, having hoses sprayed on them. They all did it for the love of it.

What about yourself, romantic-comedy for you next?

Yeah, well I think so [Laughs]. Suppose I gotta keep ‘em guessing. I don't want to go out and make another film about a group of guys entering their Heart of Darkness. It'd be nice to actually make a film with some female characters in it. Oh, I have to tell you... I got attacked by a female Herald-Sun journalist yesterday who said, ‘The problem with you guys is you have no respect for intelligent women'. What? Are you kidding?

Oh bloody hell, really!?

I was like, ‘Well, I'm making a film about the 1820s in Van Diemen's Land - and there were no women'. That's why there are no women in the film - because I wanted it to be authentic. I wasn't going to do a Ned Kelly and just create a Naomi Watts character - bugger that.

Your next interview is with Horse & Hound magazine so I'm sure that'll be a breeze. They'll keep it general.

That's hilarious! Does Horse and Hound exist? [Laughs]

I don't think so. But it's a good one!

It is! It's from Notting Hill.

And next time I'm interviewing you I'll introduce myself as Clint Morris from Horse & Hound -and you'll remember me that way.

I will! [Laughs]

VAN DIEMEN'S LAND Commences Thursday around Australia