On the 13th Novembers 2022, Luisana Castro writes on Fuser News ( Google Translation from Spanish )
The production shows that Assange has been targeted to divert public attention from what WikiLeaks has revealed.
This Sunday, the film Ithaka, which deals with the search for John Shipton, father of the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange , to save his son, private , opens in New York City, United States (USA). of freedom in the maximum security prison of Berlmarsh, in London, for more than three years.
Since the tragedy of the activist began, the media have focused attention on politics and the law, leaving aside the human part of Assange, which involves his family circle.
The same is true of the cyberactivist’s supporters, who also sometimes overlook the person and focus instead on the bigger issues at stake, reports an article published in the Consortium News by Joe Lauria.
Consortium News, the outlet that has provided perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of the WikiLeaks publisher’s Espionage Act indictment, has also focused more on the case and less on the man.
ithaka
The film Ithaka, directed by Ben Lawrence and produced by Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton, humanizes the Australian activist and reveals the impact his ordeal has had on those closest to him. It shows the legal and political complexities of the case and its background.
The title of this tape comes from the poem of the same name by Constantino Cavafis, about the pathos of an uncertain journey. It reflects Shipton’s travels across Europe and the United States in defense of his son, arguably the most important journalist of his generation.
The story begins as Shipton arrives in London to see his son behind bars for the first time after a new Ecuadorian government lifted the publisher’s asylum rights, leading to London police removing him from the embassy in April 2019.
In the film, the big issues involved transcend the individual: war, diplomacy, official deceit, high crimes, an assault on press freedom, and the core of what little democracy remains in a militarized system corrupted by government. money.
The production shows that Assange has been targeted to divert public attention from what WikiLeaks has revealed, from what the state is doing to him to hide the impact on media freedom and courtroom standards.
The creators of the audiovisual to be released in the US placed the main focus of the film on the extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court that began in February 2020 and ended in September of that year. In the lead up to the hearing, Shipton explains how important family is to him at this stage of his life.
Romance
The film explores the romance between Stella Morris and Julian Assange, which began inside the Ecuadorian embassy in 2015, showing grainy CIA-ordered surveillance footage of them meeting.
During his appearance on the video, Morris talks about his decision to start a family while there were no charges against him, no known investigation, and after a UN panel ruled that he was being arbitrarily detained and should be released.
Laurence, the writer points out that in another scene, “we see Assange briefly in prison during a video call on Stella’s phone. She shows him the sunlight and he enjoys the sound of a horse in the street.” During the recording of a BBC interview, Stella is seen to break down emotionally.
“Extraditions are 99% politics and 1% law,” says Stella. “He just needs to be treated as a human being and not be denied his dignity and his humanity, which is what has been done to him,” Assange’s wife notes in the film.
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