ITHAKA: A Father - A Family - A Fight For Justice

The film, Ithaka, exposes the brutal realities of the campaign to free Julian Assange.

Ithaka exposes the brutal realities of the campaign to free The world’s most famous political prisoner, Julian Assange.

(SALEM, Ore.) - A new film from Ben Lawrence has just been released following John Shipton’s journey around the globe advocating for his son, Julian Assange, in the face of legal battles and media glare.

A moving and intimate portrayal of one father’s fight to save his son, Ithaka exposes the brutal realities of the campaign to free Julian Assange.

The world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has become an emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes.

Journalism is not a crime.

The case criminalizes investigative journalism in violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law and serves to deter journalists from reporting on issues of National Security, particularly when exposing torture, murder, war crimes and other breech of International and Human Rights Laws.

Julian has been subjected to various forms of arbitrary deprivation of liberty since his arrest on December 7, 2010.

According to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, he has endured 10 days of detention in London’s Wandsworth prison; 550 days of house arrest, and the continuation of the deprivation of liberty in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London which lasted almost seven years.

Since April 11, 2019, he has been held in near total isolation at the maximum security prison HMP Belmarsh.

Extradition Looms

This David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with Julian’s health declining in a British maximum-security prison, the clock is ticking.

Now it’s up to Julian’s father, John Shipton, and fiancé Stella Moris, to join forces to advocate for Julian on this international odyssey.

As they rally a world-wide network of supporters and politicians, they cautiously step into the media’s glare – and are forced to confront the events that made Julian a global flashpoint.

The film's name, Ithaka, is taken from John Shipton's favorite poem, by early 20th century Greek poet C.P. Cavafy.

WATCH THE FILM (Click to find locations) (See Trailer below)

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Watch the Trailer:

Sources: Ithaka.movie; C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)