ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND
(The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15 and HtN has you covered once again. Check out Matt Delman’s Ernest Cole: Lost & Found movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Raoul Peck’s ode to James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro (2016), is one of the most powerful documentaries in recent memory. Peck returns to form with his new film Ernest Cole: Lost & Found about the influential South African photographer. Lakeith Stanfield lends his instantly recognizable voice to the storytelling. He inhabits Cole with a believable mix of warmth and cynicism. Jaded from years of paying close attention to the marginalized, bearing witness to racial injustice. Peck and Cole, in their work, draw unmistakable parallels between South African apartheid and the racism of the American South. The montage–editing by Alexandra Strauss–of striking photography in documentary form is reminiscent of Laura Poitras and Nan Goldin’s collaboration All The Beauty & The Bloodshed, which was nominated for a doc Oscar. Lost & Found should similarly be a strong contender, if enough people see it.
Peck builds his narrative from Cole’s dynamic black & white photography, and punctuates with splashes of color from more recent video footage. The film is such a visual treat that it makes the heavy themes more digestible. Peck weaves in the current-day storyline of Cole’s nephew being contacted by a bank in Sweden, who mysteriously have in their possession a safety deposit box with a treasure trove of Cole’s prints and negatives. Sometimes we’re given entire scenes through a sequence of photos, such as a young woman walking a dog, brought to life like a flipbook. Other times, Peck scans a photo, panning from one person to the next to analyze their facial reactions, such as bystanders to a black boy being accosted by a police officer. The photos make Ernest Cole a target of the South African government. So he moves to New York City. He became famous at the age of 27, when he publishes his explosive book of Apartheid photography, House of Bondage (1967).
The stream of photos are accompanied with an enjoyably Jazzy score by Alexei Aigui. However this film is much more than a fancy slideshow. Lakeith Stanfield’s voiceover brings a textured layer of performance that pulls you into the story. By about the thirty minute mark I completely forgot I was listening to Lakeith and just believed I was listening to Ernest Cole. The first person point of view is an intimate form of storytelling that is brilliantly employed here. The film’s cinematic style may not be groundbreaking, but it is exceptionally executed Ken Burns-ian style with jaw dropping photography. Overall the film feels fresh and flows nicely from one segment into the next.
In school we studied Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. I had never heard of Ernest Cole before seeing this film, and I may never have learned about him if it weren’t for the efforts of his nephew and director Raoul Peck. The thrill of seeing these undeveloped 35mm prints for the first time, before any museum gets their hands on them, is hard to replicate. It was hard for Peck to replicate his success of I Am Not Your Negro with his little-seen Silver Dollar Road, which focused on a black family being harassed by land developers trying to take their waterfront property. Samuel L. Jackson voiced James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro, and so casting Lakeith Stanfield to voice Ernest Cole may have been a conscious decision to attempt to recreate that initial film’s success. In this instance, sticking to the formula pays off. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a vibrant portrait of a troubled humanist who captured the tormented soul of South Africa and the American South through his magnificent photographs.
– Matt Delman (@ItstheRealDel)
Toronto International Film Festival; Ernest Cole: Lost and Found; Raoul Peck
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