Ernest Cole, Lost and Found: Award winning documentary to screen in Brixton
An award winning documentary will take to screens in South London for two, one-off cinema nights including Q&A sessions with the director.
Raoul Peck’s award-winning new documentary, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, will have its UK and Ireland release in cinemas from March 7.
Ahead of its formal release, the documentary will be screened for two special previews at Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton and the BFI Southbank, on February 26 and 27 respectively.
Both screenings will feature Q&A’s with the director Mr Peck.
Winner of the L’Œil d’or for Best Documentary Film at Cannes Film Festival 2024, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found documents the life of the South African photographer who exposed the horrors of Apartheid-era South Africa to the world through pictures.
Born in Eersterust, near Pretoria, in 1940, as a young Black man Mr Cole experienced the daily humiliations of the system from the inside.
He was a 20-year-old newspaper photographer in Johannesburg in 1960 when 69 Africans died in Sharpeville protesting the passbook laws that restricted their movements through their country.
That same year, Mr Cole’s neighborhood was demolished to make room for white development.
One of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa, which was only possible due to his reclassification from ‘Black’ to ‘Coloured’ under apartheid, Mr Cole documented everyday life with assignments for Drum magazine and The New York Times, amongst others.
Defying the pass police and hiding his camera in a paper bag, Mr Cole surveyed the precarious living conditions of Black South Africans, from mine labourers to domestic workers in white households, as well as the state of the transport and health sectors.
His landmark book, House of Bondage, was published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old and became one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century.
A year later, in 1968, his photographs were banned from South Africa.
Mr Cole’s work led him into exile in New York City and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings.
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, recounts Mr Cole’s turmoil as an artist and his anger at the silence and complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime.
The film also follows the process of discovery of some 60,000 negatives of his work that were found in 2017 in the safe of a Swedish bank.
Through his photographs, writings, and audio from the expanded Cole archive, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable photographer who is finally getting his dues.
For tickets, visit: https://ticketing.picturehouses.com/Ticketing/visSelectTickets.aspx?cinemacode=004&txtSessionId=62209&visLang=1
Pictured top: Ernest Cole Lost and Found by Raoul Peck (Picture: Ernest Cole)