Documentary film
Documentary about Ernest Cole's journey as the first black photographer in apartheid South Africa
“Ernest Cole:
“Lost and Found” is a documentary film by renowned director Raoul Peck, who gained international acclaim with “I Am Not Your Negro.” At the center of the film is the life and work of South African photographer Ernest Cole (1940-1990), who documented the brutal reality of apartheid in South Africa with his photo book “House of Bondage” in 1967. Cole’s images made the suffering of the black population visible and brought the injustices of the regime into global awareness. However, despite his groundbreaking influence, Cole fell into obscurity in the 1980s and died in exile in New York in 1990, impoverished and at the age of only 49.
The film reconstructs the work and tumultuous biography of this visionary artist based on 60,000 photographic negatives discovered in a Swedish bank vault in 2017. With a mix of archival material, personal texts, and the voice of actor LaKeith Stanfield (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) as Ernest Cole, Peck creates a portrait that is both artistically and politically impressive.