Melbourne International Film Festival Review - Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

 

“To me photography is part of life and any photograph worth looking at twice is a reflection of life, of reality, of nature, of people, of the work of men from art to war.”

Somber, reflective and tragic, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a stirring lament centring on the life and work of Ernest Cole, famed Apartheid photographer and chronicler, told through voiceover narration to accompany a slideshow of Cole’s own stunning visual work that depicts the heartache of segregation and inequality in a deeply moving and sorrowful documentary. 

Discussion Points:

Haitian-born and Congo-raised documentarian and filmmaker Raoul Peck, who was Oscar nominated and BAFTA winning for I Am Not Your Negro, has crafted a somber and powerful biography of the inestimably important photographer Ernest Cole. Cole was a South African photographer who catalogued the horrors of Apartheid and published a photo book House of Bondage in 1967. The book was banned in South Africa, and Cole was effectively exiled from the country. Finding a new life in the United States, Cole was saddened to find that racism was still rife and turned his camera to continuing to capture the inequality he saw in the world. Part-biographical documentary, and part-historical essay, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found utilises 60,000 newly discovered negatives from a Swedish bank vault (a discovery and location that still has many unanswered questions swirling around it), with powerful first person narration from LaKeith Stanfield as the voice of Ernest Cole to chronicle Cole’s own story and the history of Apartheid as captured by his camera. Absolutely stunning images are soberly assembled to capture a deep sense of lament and sorrow. Deeply moving and profoundly touching.