Jeff Topham’s first documentary, Liberia ’77 sees the Canadian filmmaker and his younger brother Andrew return to Liberia 30 years after they first lived there as children, when their father worked for Canadian mining company Exchem during the 1970s. This West African country influenced their sense of identity, with their father’s photos of the country and their time there not only instilling a love of photography for both brothers, but also collecting their childhood memories. A childhood that saw them grow up in the jungle and having a chimpanzee, Evelyn, as a pet.
Jeff Topham now, and Jeff in 1977
In 2010 Jeff and Andrew travelled back to Liberia, a country ravaged by years of civil war, to find out what had happened to the people they remembered and to fulfil a desire to return to a place they feel an innate connection with. Liberia ’77 deals with the expectations and responsibilities that Jeff and Andrew encountered when they go looking for the people in their father’s photos. The film also explores the power and purpose photography has in shaping identity for both individuals and nations.
Liberia ’77 is playing at Possible Worlds, Sydney’s Canadian Film Festival this weekend, and Jeff has travelled with the film for a Q&A session that will be held after the screening. I was fortunate enough to speak to Jeff this week, where I found out more about his intriguing documentary.
How does it feel being in Sydney promoting Canadian Film?
It is pretty cool. I’m in some pretty good company here. It’s my first documentary and it was pretty low budget, and pretty much done by the seat of our pants. The fact that it is getting out there, getting a bit of attention and it is doing what I wanted it to do, is amazing. The fact that I’m in Sydney now, that’s awesome.
Why did you decide that 2010 was the time to make this film?
It just seemed to be the right time. Liberia was always a really dangerous place to go, even last year I had hesitations going in with cameras. I knew it was going to be okay, but still we could have been held up and had our gear ripped off in the first day and we would have been screwed.
I had given a talk about Liberia and shown some photographs a few months before, and one of the public broadcasters was there, and then when I pitched him the idea for the film he really liked it. It just all kind of worked out; I was nowhere near on the right path when things seemed to just fall into place, without having to push or pull too much, and the timing was just right too.
Andrew Topham talking to locals in Monrovia
How did your brother Andrew get involved?
Andrew wasn’t even going to come until about two weeks before we left, it was just going to be me and Melanie [Wood], my producer. Then I got to thinking ‘how am I going to do this? I need another person to come and take pictures’. My brother is a really talented photographer, he’s twice as good as I am. If he hadn’t come I don’t think we would have got the film we have.
Often in Canadian films there seem to be themes of a longing, or connection with a childhood or ancestral homeland or nation, do you think that search is part of the Canadian psyche?
I don’t know, I guess because we are a country of immigrants. I do think a lot about that idea of identity and where you come from. I barely know where my grandparents came from, they came from England four generations ago. I think we look for those roots.
How does Liberia come into your identity?
We moved around because my dad worked in mining, and for me Liberia was always what differentiated me from the other kids. We had this stack of photographs that when we moved to a new town I could invite my new friends to over and show them ‘here are the pictures of me with the chimpanzee’ and ‘we used to live in Africa’. All of a sudden you have this sort of cache, you were a bit different and it allowed us to fit into places. So for me Liberia was always that; as a kid, I was the kid who lived in Liberia and my brother too. I always wanted to go back.
Andrew, Jefferson (James' son) and Jeff
When you set up the project, what were you going over to Liberia to do?
We had two ideas, we were either going to try and find James our housekeeper or the other idea was to recreate my dad’s photographs, to do before and after. So both of those were great, and both went out the window when Jeff Jr. [James’ son, Jefferson] turned up really early on, and that kind of took over. What is cool about it is you start with a plan or an idea and it often goes off in a totally different direction.
Jefferson turned up on our doorstep, and we were like ‘there’s the end of our film’ and we were only two days in, so it became a different idea. The Exchem guys they all just started showing up, the chimps, everybody was there. That was what was remarkable after 30 years, the country- it seemed like it was just waiting for us to come back.
What you showed in the film was the sense of responsibility you felt. You had come back into the country to look for these people, and they had said ‘well here we are, where do we go from here?’ How did that feel dealing with their expectations?
I don’t want to say it was terrible, but it was surprising. It was a lot of weight. The weight itself of just going back to this place and digging up memories. All of a sudden all this stuff was put on our shoulders that we didn’t expect. I didn’t expect James’ son to show up, and what do I do with this? And all these Exchem guys, sure it is a great idea to organise a photograph, but what do we do with this? It was really hard, and the last thing I wanted to do going into this, was to be two white guys going in to save Africa. I was so conscious of that. I wanted to do something different, and not be the ‘great white hope’, even though that is what we were in some ways.
1977- Andrew, Evelyn and Jeff; 2010- Jeff, DJ and Andrew
Something I noticed in the film was the T-shirts designs you were wearing. When you are kids in Liberia you are photographed in Canadian T-shirts, then when you and Andrew go back,you are wearing t-shirts with African imagery. What did you think about this, and what is saying about longing?
It wasn’t conscious, but I know when I watch it we are walking down the road and Andrew has his blue Africa T-shirt, and even when the kid takes a picture of him he is wearing a T-shirt that says Africa with a zebra on it. I don’t know if Andrew was conscious of it. We had hardly brought any clothes with us, we wore the same T-shirts everyday. It is interesting, I know when I wear my Africa stuff at home, it feels like it is part of who I am.
One of the main points about your film is that photography is universal, and you shows what the Liberian people have lost by not having any photos of their past. You have set up a collection for photos of pre-civil war Liberia images to try and give them back this part of their history. The worry I would have is that you will only have images taken by white ex-pats to give to them as their national imagery.
Which is a really interesting thing, again we didn’t have much planning going in. And even this idea was a good idea going in, but that is exactly what is happening. I kind of knew it would happen, but I was also hoping that maybe this will get out farther. There were a lot of Liberians, the Americo-Liberians, who left [before and during the civil wars] so there are Liberians who have photographs, and I have got some of those. But it is a very, I don’t want to say skewed view, but it is very representative of my view as well. As a journalist and sort of an anthropologist it is fascinating. I’m already getting requests from universities and students, people who want to use this project for research, because it is a really interesting idea- who creates history.
There is a beautiful moment in the film where you are handing out photo portraits to all the people you have met, and Andrew is especially please with one he had taken, but the subject is less than impressed that he isn’t in the centre of the frame.
For me that is the best moment in the film. It sums up how ridiculous it all is, how powerful it is, how important photos are and how not important the art of it all is. We all take ourselves so seriously about creating these beautiful images, and think it is about the power of photography and all this guy wanted was a picture of himself where his arm wasn’t cut off. To me it is perfect. You couldn’t have asked for a better encapsulating moment of how I feel about it all too. It is funny, it’s sad- even the idea of having his arm cut off [by the photo's framing], which happened to people who were casualties of war, even that bit of symbolism in there- he wanted a full body picture. I love that moment a lot too.
Is there any thought to sending the film back to Liberia for screenings?
We’d like to. As our photo project goes along ideally we’d like to go back to Liberia, hopefully next year and do a photo show at the national gallery of the stuff that we gathered and do a screening of the film too. It is a daunting feeling, when I was making it I was very conscious that I would have to show it to Liberians. I made it for those guys too. I don’t know how it will be viewed, it is terrifying in a way.
Jeff Topham with producer Melanie Wood
So what did you learn from making your first documentary?
Filmmaking is a hard thing, especially if you care about something really deeply. If I’ll do another film? I don’t know this was so challenging on so many levels. There is no money in documentaries, so to do something like this again I would really have to care about something like that, and I don’t know, at this point, if I care about something that much to try it again.
Where does your future lie with Liberia?
We have started collecting cameras. I’d love to do more with kids, if we could recruit some people on the ground there to get cameras to kids, and not just the rich ex-pat kids, but actual local kids. I’d love to see the other side of the story as well.
Liberia ’77 is screening at the Dendy Opera Quays on Saturday 13th August at 6:30pm
For more information visit Possible Worlds website
