Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Avant première

At the end of the 1960’s, photographer Ernest Cole showed from the inside out what apartheid meant for black South Africans like himself, in his shocking book House of Bondage. The world was appalled. Cole faded into oblivion in the 1980’s, partly because his negatives seemed to have been lost. In 2017, a great many of them were recovered.

Through the lens of Cole, who died in poverty, director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) looks back on his life and work. In the United States, Cole continued to photograph black communities, both in the cities and in the countryside. Painfully, patrons failed to recognise the urgency of his work. The fact that he saw more and more similarities to racism in his own country was not a welcome message.

With hindsight, Cole’s observations are extremely valuable. Euphoria about the freedom he expected to find in America gradually made way for disappointment and homesickness. In Cannes, Ernest Cole, Lost and Found was awarded the L’Oeil d’or for best documentary. (Source: IDFA).

An introduction to the film will be given by Dr Ulrike Mueller, senior lecturer at University College Maastricht. She focuses on how systems of privilege, more specifically whiteness and nationality, affect people and how they live their lives.
 

In cooperation with Lumière Cinema.