Notes from Liberia

Directed by Judd Ehrlich

This film traces the journey of the late Japanese cinematographer Ryo Murakami to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Plantation in Liberia. Under the cover of night, he trespasses onto the plantation grounds and enters a scarcely seen world, where coercive living conditions and labor practices have changed alarmingly little since the plantation opened in 1926. Journalistic access to the plantation is tightly controlled and monitored by the company, and Ryo’s footage is a rare independent vision of the lives of plantation workers.