Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Directed by the great Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck and narrated by Lakeith Stanfield, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a portrait of the late South African photographer Ernest Cole (Raoul Peck, 2024), one of the first Black photographers to document the country’s brutal and racist apartheid regime during the 1960s. He fled to the US in 1966, and in 1967 he published the photography book House of Bondage, which collected his damning visual evidence and was banned in his home country. His life for the next two decades was filled with hardships, including homelessness, and he lost control of his body of work. He died in 1990 at 49 from cancer, just a few years before the end of apartheid. Miraculously, a trove of his negatives was discovered in 2017 in Sweden. Now, his work is being made available again, and his place in history being properly evaluated. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found won the L’Oeil d’or prize for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. Peck is the director of I Am Not Your Negro (2016), Exterminate All Brutes (2021), and many more. (105 mins., DCP) 

At 5:45 PM, Jared Thorne, photographer and assistant professor in Ohio State’s Department of Art, leads a conversation about Cole’s life and body of work. Thorne taught in South Africa from 2010 to 2015. 

Conversation with Ohio State Assistant Professor Jared Thorne between screenings.