ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND

(director/writer: Raoul Peck; cinematographers: Wolfgang Held, Moses Tau, Raoul Peck; editor: Alexandra Strauss; music: Alexeï Aïgul; cast: LaKeith Stanfield; Runtime: 105; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Tamara Rosenberg, Raoul Peck; Magnolia; 2024)

“Powerful historical documentary.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (“I am Not Your Negro”/”The Young Karl Marx”) superbly directs and writes this powerful historical documentary on the abusive and oppressive system of apartheid in South Africa as seen through the photos of Earnest Cole.

Ernest Cole is a South African photographer who first showed the evil nature of apartheid to the world in his revealing black-and-white photos. At the age of 27, in 1967, he published his book on racism, House of Bondage, while living in exile in NYC. He never again regained his bearings after leaving his homeland and led a lonely and unsatisfied life. He was subject to arrest if he returned to South Africa.

Peck follows Cole’s letter writings, his wanderings and travails as an artist, and comments on projects he got involved with in America that never amounted to much. Cole eventually became homeless and died of cancer in 1990, at age 50, in NYC, just weeks before Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

In 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were mysteriously found in the safe of a Swedish bank.

LaKeith Stanfield gives voice to Cole’s life. Peck films it as if a thriller.

It played at the Cannes Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 9/29/2024  GRADE: B+
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