Rent TIGER ON THE ROCKS
The Tasmanian Tiger once roamed throughout Australia, leaving lasting connections with the land and its First Peoples.
Tiger on the Rocks takes audiences on a mesmerising journey around Australia, raising questions about the Tasmanian Tiger’s 25-million-year-old past, when Thylacines lived across the continent and showing how Australia’s largest surviving marsupial predator co-existed with Australia’s First Peoples for many thousands of years.
SCAPEGOAT OF A COLONY
SPIRIT OF A CONTINENT
Watch
Watch TIGER ON THE ROCKS on SBS TV
on 5 January 2024 at 7.30pm.
Then stream free on SBS On Demand
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About
The Tasmanian Tiger is Australia’s most wanted animal. Its name stirs hearts and its fate is a wake-up call. Its images tantalise. On a cave wall in Mok Clan country in far north Australia, a magnificent painting of the Tiger is the final resting place of an ancestor spirit. The local people call it djarnkerrk. Also called the Thylacine, it’s not a true ‘tiger’ but a pouched animal with striped flanks, a kangaroo’s tail and a dog’s head. Like the much smaller Tasmanian Devil, the Tasmanian Tiger is a predator. The British who colonised Tasmania from the early 1800s blamed it for killing their sheep. Bounty hunters shot it and there have been no verifiable sights since the 1930s. But its story lives on all over the continent in rock art, footprints and fossil bones.
TIGER ON THE ROCKS goes in search of the traces. Thylacines survived through 25 million years of drastic ecological changes. First Nations peoples have long known the animal as a presence linked with the land and culture. In stunning landscapes where Thylacines once roamed, people from wide-ranging traditions share their experiences: First Nations artists, rangers and custodians; biologists, bone hunters and archaeologists.
With creative use of landscapes, interviews, artworks, archives and animation, TIGER ON THE ROCKS takes audiences into the Thylacine’s world. Sheep-killing beast, or tragic victim of human-induced extinction. Ancient painting on a rock, or vivid ancestor spirit. Lost forever, or a timely reminder to respect the connection between human and animal, culture, nature and country. Multiple insights combine to throw light on the Tiger’s still-living power to challenge us to take action together and reverse the tidal wave of extinction.
The Storytellers
Dr Anna Gillespie, an ‘acid queen’ at the Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab, University of New South Wales, is an expert in the art of recovering specimens trapped in the limestone of Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Area in Queensland.
Jeffrey Lee AM is Senior Cultural Custodian of Koongarra, the traditional lands of the Djok Clan, in World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park.
Yidumduma Bill Harney is Senior Elder of the Wardaman People whose country is near Katherine. He learnt his people’s law and astronomy under the stars and grew up to become a revered Bush Professor and artist.
Dr Adam Yates, Senior Curator of Earth Sciences at the Museum of Central Australia, leads a dedicated team that has been excavating fossil sites in the heart of Australia for over 30 years.
Lindsay Hatcher, a bone hunter and palaeontology expert who’s probably been in more of the many caves beneath the deserts of southwest Australia than anyone else, was co-founder of National Thylacine Day.
Dr Ken Mulvaney is an archaeologist who has spent most of his career studying and advocating for the rock art of Murujuga, which is located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Dr Lauren White recently completed a ground-breaking PhD about Thylacines, at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide.
Lois Nadjamerrek is Senior Elder of the Mok Clan Estate in Arnhem Land, at the top of the Northern Territory. Her late father, Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO, one of Arnhem Land’s finest artists, worked to establish communities for First Nations people, including his own family, to return to.
Mary Kolkiwarra Nadjamerrek (Bardayal Nadjamerrek’s widow) is an esteemed Bush Professor and song-woman.
Gavin Namarnyilk (Bardayal Nadjamerrek’s grandson) is an artist who also works as a ranger caring for their country.
The Filmmakers
Cathryn Vasseleu is a filmmaker, photographer and animator. While living in Darwin from 2010-2017 she ventured to remote parts of Australia and inside science labs, researching and filming a documentary about the iconic Tasmanian Tiger. Her previous films include De Anima (a finalist in the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films) and As If One Bird (made for The Overwintering Project, an environmental art project to raise awareness for critically endangered migratory shorebirds). She has a doctorate in philosophy and has been a lecturer and research fellow in philosophy and media arts at several universities in Australia and the USA, including Vice- Chancellor’s research fellow in philosophy at University of New South Wales, a visiting teaching/research fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and an ARC fellow (1999-2004) at the University of Technology Sydney, where she also taught animation for 11 years. Author of a book about vision and touch, Textures of Light, and editor of the English translation of Czech Surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s book on tactile art, Touching and Imagining, she is also an award-winning photographer of birds and weather.
Pat Fiske, Bower Bird Films, has directed and/or produced many award-winning documentaries and has mentored many emerging filmmakers by producing or consulting on their projects or helping them through difficulties over the years. In 2001 she was awarded the prestigious Stanley Hawes Award for her outstanding contribution to the documentary industry in Australia. In 2001-2002 she was Documentary Consultant at SBS Independent television for 18 months and was Co-Head of Documentary at AFTRS from 2002-2008. In the 1970s and 80s, Pat was on the boards of Filmnews and the Australian Screen Director’s Association (ASDA now ADG). Since the early 1990s to today, she has been on the Advisory Panel for the Sydney Film Festival. At present she is on the Board of ASDACS. In 2023 Pat was awarded The Order of Australia (OAM) for her services to the film industry. Some of her films: Directing: Rocking the Foundations; Woolloomooloo; For All the World to See; Australia Daze; Following the Fence Line; An Artist in Eden; Footprints on our Land. Producing: Business Behind Bars, Selling Sickness, River of No Return, Scarlet Road, Love Marriage in Kabul, Oyster, Rosemary’s Way and most recently When the Camera Stopped Rolling and Tiger on the Rocks.
Rachael Maza is a Yidinji (FNQ), Meriam (TSI), and Dutch. Also Artistic Director for Ilbijerri Theatre (2008 – present). Maza is known for her work on Stage and Screen: presenter on ABC Message Stick, stage play and film Radiance, Sapphires, Holy Day and Beautiful One Day and as an acting coach for the film Rabbit Proof Fence. Awards include: 2003 Uncle Bob Maza Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to Victorian Indigenous Theatre – the VIPA Awards, The Drovers Award for Touring Legend, the Australia Council 2019 Theatre Award, 2019 Honorary Doctorate for Performing Arts ECU and the Inaugural Alumni Award ECU 2019. In 2020 AM (Order of Australia) for work in the Performing Arts, and Greenroom Lifetime Achievement Award 2021. Directing Credits include: Ilbijerri Productions: Stolen, Chopped Liver, Jack Charles V The Crown, Foley, Which Way Home and My Urrwai, Black Ties and Heart is a Wasteland.
CONTACT US
DISTRIBUTOR
International Distributor (excluding Australia)
Abacus Media Rights
https://www.abacusmediarights.com
Running Time
55 minutes
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