Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Eight years after his magisterial portrait of James Baldwin I Am Not Your Negro, master documentarian Raoul Peck turns his considered focus to the life and career of South African photographer Ernest Cole. With a vocal performance from LaKeith Stanfield, Peck deftly weaves through the biography of Cole’s life using only his trenchant B&W photographs and impassioned letters and journals. Cole was hailed as a master of singular style for his ability to capture the depredations of life under apartheid and the fissures of Jim Crow American life with immediacy and artistry. Yet for all his success, Cole rarely had stability or steady income. The film unpacks the perplexing trajectory of Cole’s life alongside the troubling mystery of Cole’s archives with stunning effect. Peck’s film captures (and rescues for history) the life of a Black man who managed to make extraordinary art in the face of two distinct and oppressive regimes.
—Rod Armstrong