“ RiqueSpeaks: Liberia 77” A Review
Liberian Literary Magazine
“ RiqueSpeaks: Liberia 77” A Review
Henrique Hopkins
“ Liberia 77” is a part of an ever growing body of Liberia themed postWar films and literature. The 2010 documentary follows two Canadian brothers, Jeff and Andrew Topham, as they return to Liberia, in which they spent two exciting childhood years during the late 1970’ s. What makes the film resonate is watching the Topham brothers’ experience in their own way, the sense of loss, displacement, disappointment, anguish and uncertainty felt by Liberian nationals in the wake of the long period of Liberian social instability. Also special is the weapon the Tophams use to fight back and reconnect with the Liberia of their childhood, as well as do their small part to bring hope for the future. Photography is their profession, and they use it in“ Liberia 77” as what the late great photographer Gordon Parks referred to as their“ choice of weapons.” The film resonates because I have always known Liberians in particular to have a great love of photographs. Photographs have also been my primary connection to Liberia! Having been born in America after the 1980 coup. The Liberia I know is a world of pictures, some black and white, some with that 1970s brown tint, and others in rich old school saturation. It ' s a world of well dressed, mod‘ 60s young men and women in High School and College yearbooks. Older people in their Sunday best, and President Tubman receiving foreign dignitaries in formal attire, or GQ suits, often with cigar in hand. A world of“ dream houses” with car ports and wood paneled walls. Black & White studio portraits of Parents, Aunts, Uncles. Landmarks such as the E. J Roye building or the Ducor Palace are in the background, not emphasized because the important thing in the pictures was the people, and the people taking the pictures assumed the buildings that served as a backdrop would long survive, like the Eifel Tower or Empire State Building. It ' s also a world of images of rivers, mining camps, staff housing, country devils and traditional dance troupes. Villages with
Promoting Liberian literature, Arts and Culture
traditional housing, well beat down dirt roads, and smiling children, poor but strong families. As the years progressed and my Father made trips back home, it became images of dilapidation, the strong foundations still visible but wasting away from lack of maintenance. By the‘ 90’ s, those images provided cause for despair. For the Topham brothers, their Liberian photos were the visual documents of a high point in their childhoods. They lived with their Parents at the Exchem compound in Margibi, where their Father supervised the manufacture of industrial explosives and shotgun shells. The family left Liberia mere months before the 1980 coup that deposed President Tolbert and other members of government. The photographs of that time spent in Liberia, which included pictures with a monkey named Betsy, became such a part of their identity that these two white Canadian kids were known as“ the kids from Liberia” during their youth in Canada. It was the appreciation and love of the Liberia captured on their Parents photographs that gave them their artistic vocation and profession as Photographers. The two years they lived in Liberia gave them photographs that told a story that helped form their identity as individuals as well as a family. This is the set up for the shock and uneasy feelings of their return to Liberia, to discover that the war has not only destroyed people, roads and buildings, but also the photographic images of how beautiful and vital those people and buildings had once been. They talk to men who had worked with their father at Exchem, who told them stories of how they had been forced to bury or destroy pictures of themselves during the Civil War, for fear of the suspected wealth the possession of photographs implied. The only images many of these men had left of their handsome youth was their company ID cards, many of which had to be dug up for the Topham brothers return. Cinematically this four decade spanning story is advanced by its subject, pictures. There is a slide montage that tells the story of Liberia, ending on a brutal image of a soldier behind a human skull. The brothers had a goal of recreating the original photos that had been taken in their youth. Doing so
38