Travelling towards ourselves: rights and recognition in Clara Law's Letters to Ali

• Published in: Studies in Australasian cinema Vol. 3; no. 1; pp. 15 - 28
• Main Author: Brennan, Bernadette
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.01.2009; Intellect
• Subjects: Afghan people; asylum-seeker narratives; Children; Documentary films; Ethics; Mandatory detention; Middle East peoples; Politics; politics of fear; Refugees; social justice; Social responsibility
• ISSN: 1750-3175; 1750-3183
• DOI: 10.1386/sac.3.1.15_1

In Letters to Ali (2004) emigrant film-maker Clara Law takes her viewers on a journey, both physical and moral, towards an understanding of the plight of asylum seekers in Australia today. Letters to Ali grew out of Law's discovery that an Anglo-Australian family had established, through letters, phone calls and one visit, a powerful relationship with a 15-year-old Afghan boy detained in the Port Hedland detention centre since 2001. When the family members set out on their second trek across and through the centre of Australia to visit 'Ali', Law and Eddie Fong, equipped with a DV camcorder, went along. Law was unsure about how the film would take shape but she knew two things: that the issue of children in detention needed urgent attention; and that the film she would make would be more like a documentary or an essay film, because the story of an incarcerated, unaccompanied minor needed no dramatization. This essay explores some of Law's filmic strategies to demonstrate how she invites her audience not only to understand what is happening in Australia to those who come seeking asylum from terror, but also to recognize their responsibility to them.