The Lawson Common Room returns — this month, a conversation about how we look, and who we look at.
Judges assess which version of events is true. Filmmakers decide which version of events you see. Both, in the end, are doing the same work: shaping how the world gets witnessed.
Hosted by Nyat Mulugeta — a womens', peace and security scholar engaged in community advocacy, mutual aid, and connection across Perth’s East African diaspora — we’re joined by two guests who’ve spent their careers at the sharper edges of human experience.
The Hon. Justice Bruno Fiannaca of the Supreme Court of Western Australia once agonised over a choice between a career in film and a career in the law. He chose the law — three decades as a prosecutor, including as Deputy DPP, before his appointment to the bench in 2015 — and along the way has weighed more human stories than most of us will read in a lifetime.
Sarah Elliott went the other way. After more than a decade working with the UN Refugee Agency as an international human rights and refugee lawyer in East Africa, Europe and Ukraine — she now tells those stories through film.
This event will explore memory, responsibility, identity and the experiences that stay with us and shape our journeys — alongside the practical realities of balancing creativity, career and the call to tell a story.
– Doors from 5PM
– Talk + Q&A from 5.30PM in the Studio
– Drinks + chats from 6.15PM in Luis’
– Members $10, Public $25 (includes a drink on arrival)