Ernest Cole’s camera was his weapon in the fight against apartheid. His images laid bare the cruelty of a segregated South Africa, exposing the truth when the world tried to look away. Ahead of the release of Raoul Peck's Ernest Cole: Lost and Found on 7 March learn about the life and work of the fearless photographer.
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ERNEST COLE FACTS & INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR RAOUL PECK
What did Ernest Cole’s work mean to you prior to making this film? (Interview with Director Raoul Peck).
“The first thing you should know is that, while I am probably a bit younger than Ernest Cole’s generation, that's still my generation. So I remember a lot of those pictures. For example, the one of the older woman sitting on the bench that reads “White Only.” But I didn't know it was Ernest Cole. And in the ‘70s, there were not many recognized black photographers. It was rare.
That's why those photographs are so unique. I grew up with the anti-apartheid fight. I was in Berlin when I was 17 and many people engaged in the fight were in exile. The ANC (African National Congress) was in exile. Various liberation movements were in exile and we did demonstrations together. I helped write a pamphlet and did photography at the time. So this is not a foreign story to me. On the contrary, it was something I could totally relate to.”
The film is so powerful, partly because of your creative choice of letting Ernest tell his own story through your writing. You guide the viewer into his headspace with the help of his photographs and his words, braided with your own writing.
“I wasn’t going to tell this story through talking heads—that would have been a totally different story, like a biography. And I don't do biography, I tell stories. I want you to be able to watch this film twice, get into the story and be caught by it. That means you need characters, you need motivation, conflict, evolution, redemption, all of that. And because I write screenplays, I know how to attain that, both in narrative and documentary form. And so the most important decision here was that he tells the story. “
As Ernest Cole’s voice, LaKeith Stanfield unearths the depth of the text with expressive power. How did you cast him and what was your direction to him?
“From the get-go, I knew that Ernest was telling his story, so that I would need an Ernest. And my Ernest should be an actor, not a narrator, not someone who will just read the text in a monotonous voice. It had to be like I did with I Am Not Your Negro, with Samuel L. Jackson being James Baldwin, you know? And that's the magic of cinema. Once you are in it, you are in it. You don't go, “Oh, it's not Ernest.” So I had a list of actors who I thought could be the voice—the criteria for me are the same ones I would use if I was making a narrative. Who could carry that soul? Who could be real enough to make it work?”
What’s something you hope that people, both who are already familiar with Ernest Cole and those who are new to his work, will hold close after hearing his story and seeing his photographs?
“I would say that this is more than the story of Ernest Cole himself. What I hope the audiences will keep from this is to learn to be critical of what they are served, to learn how to deconstruct he stories around them. And they should apply that to everything. Ernest Cole is just one example, but you could do that for many artists, many black artists, in South Africa, The States, in Europe. Challenge institutions who have been the gatekeepers and the so-called saviors of all their work. They need to be questioned. You know, there is a great movement right now to return all the goods to their original countries. For me, this film is embedded in that movement.”