The work of Black South African photographer Ernest Cole is being rediscovered, more than 30 years after his death at the age of 49.
Part of that resurgence is due to the documentary Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, directed by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck. It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival after sharing the top prize for documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
“He was one of the first ones to really document Apartheid in image, going places where no other photographer could go,” Peck explained as he stopped by Deadline’s Studio in Toronto. “And then he had, of course, to leave South Africa and came to New York and try to start a new life in exile.”
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After the publication of Cole’s 1967 volume of photographs, House of Bondage, he was forced to leave his home country by a government that did not look kindly on his penetrating work.
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“It’s an iconic book even today by today’s standards,” Peck said, “and it’s a book that will stay forever as the real document of Apartheid and what it means to live under Apartheid.”
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found draws upon some of the 60,000 negatives and prints of Cole’s that were recently discovered in a bank vault in Sweden. However, that discovery in and of itself is not the focus of the documentary.
“I didn’t want to make it the center of the film,” the director said. “For me, it was about Ernest Cole telling his own story, and launching his career again, somehow.”
In Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, about James Baldwin, actor Samuel L. Jackson voiced writings of Baldwin. For his Ernest Cole film, Peck turned to actor LaKeith Stanfield to bring Cole’s writings to life.
“I knew that I needed somebody who will not only ‘impersonate,’ but really embodied Ernest Cole, as I did for I Am Not Your Negro,” Peck said. “I needed an actor to be a character, not to play or not to narrate. LaKeith was extraordinary. His voice, his demeanor, the way he felt the words of Ernest Cole were exactly what I was looking for.”
Peck continued, “I didn’t want this neutral voice like you would use in any other narration. That’s not what I wanted. An actor embodies a character and being him at every moment of the film, depending on the emotions that he has to channel or the mood or the intensity, and only a great actor can really do that the way I needed it.”
Watch the full conversation in the video above.
Deadline Studio at TIFF is sponsored by Final Draft.