An Interview with Raoul Peck about Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

I met Raoul Peck in London when he was in town for the 2024 London Film Festival to promote his latest, searing documentary, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. Peck was impeccably turned out, with an eye for detail that you would expect from a filmmaker who has made work of such intellectual rigour and formal elegance as Exterminate All of the Brutes (2021), I Am Not Your Negro (2016) and Lumumba (2000). 

Peck’s work has meant a lot to me as a Pakistani filmmaker; as someone from a former colony, I have long admired the clarity and inventiveness of his vision. We laughed about the irony of meeting in the erstwhile Imperial capital, London, with a view of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. One of the reasons this conversation with Peck mattered so much to me was that it gave me the chance to meet a filmmaker who understands what it is to grow up in the shadow of colonisation, and to be racialised: to grow up at the centre but in the margins, so to speak, and yet never to compromise. 

Peck was born in 1953 in Haiti and educated in Congo, Germany and the United States. Apart from his impressive body of work as a writer and director in documentary and fiction, he has taught at La Fémis in Paris, been Minister of Culture in Haiti and driven a New York taxi. Anyone who understands the reality for racialised peoples in the “global north” and the precarity of life as an independent filmmaker will not find the more savage contrasts of such a career remotely surprising. 

I began my conversation with Peck by explaining that his work means a great deal to me as a Pakistani (and British) filmmaker. And that I view his work from the perspective of someone who understands what it is to have been colonised.

– N.Q.F.

* * *

RP: You can say it louder. Nobody is pure here. Nobody can pretend to be pure. We all came from the same motherland. 

NQF: Can you say more about the motherland, can you say more about that?

Africa. We all started in Africa with Lucy. 

Oh yes, of course. And actually one of the reasons your work really resonates with me, is because of my interest in Fanon, who is a really big figure….

I wrote a screenplay about Fanon, you know. 

Yes, I want to talk about that. I would like to come to that. But first congratulations on this film. It is a really wonderful film. I was curious about Ernest Cole’s presence in your life before you came to the film, and then also how the story eventually came to you? Were your photographs part of your life before that?

Well like many people of my generation I got engaged with Ernest’s photos without knowing that it was Ernest. Within the anti-apartheid fight, starting in the ‘70s for me. I was a young man in Berlin. I was 17 and we were using those photos to have an influence, to write articles etcetera. But at the time it was not the thing to take these photos as an “artistic photo”, it was always in the context of a fight, the context of liberation. In that context. By the way, that’s one of the critiques that Ernest himself has voiced later – that his work was used for propaganda sometimes. It was not just that they weren’t paying for his work, which was his livelihood. But they were using it back and forth. At the time “authors’ rights” did not really exist. It was about… being a rebel. So, for a long time I didn’t really acknowledge his existence, you know? It was not in the way you see “artistic work”. That’s a very new notion. To be able to demand that you are considered an artist, that you exist – that’s very modern …

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Ah, yes this is something I noted down. Early on in the film – I think you’re quoting his letters – he says “The total man does not live one experience.” And I understood it in a way (and correct me if I’m wrong) as a complaint that his work had been flattened? A cheeky part of me wonders if you could talk about that in relation to Cole but maybe also in relation to your own work?

Well if I start with Cole, I would say that for him, when as a young South African boy or man – he was 16 – as he says in the film, he got a book about Cartier Bresson. And that opened a world for him. And he sees this white man, saying I want to document the human condition – that spoke to him, but he doesn’t say “black human condition” or “Asian human condition”, it’s just the human condition. And Cartier Bresson went all over the world making photos. So for him this is a possibility; this is something he should have too. 

So when he leaves South Africa for the United States, he’s going to the free world – that’s what the propaganda of the time was. The United States, at the time, is the “free world”. He got away from prison. And when he gets out, they say “No no, you’re going to go in that box. You’re a black photographer.” And when he says, “I didn’t want to be the chronicler of misery”, well that’s what he got. Assignments they give him: you know, “Go in the ghetto, go where the black population is, go to the South. It will be interesting to see what you do when you go to the South. You know, with your eyes.” So, it’s putting you in a box. When you look at his archive, he has stuff about fashion, he has a lot of different thematics. You know?

Yes, there’s a great photograph [in your film] of these male lovers in New York. 

Yes, you can see the diversity of his gaze. And not only that he’s in the free world but that he’s discovering so much more. About what it means for him to be a person, a free person. So all of that was totally reduced. So that’s part of his demise somehow. And besides the racist part of it – you know, your work not being respected the way you’ve thought. 

Yes. That’s what I got from it, that part of the racism of the system was that his work wasn’t taken seriously like say Cartier Bresson’s was. 

Yes of course. And by the way this is something that still exists. I have a lot of black filmmaker friends who cannot make their films today because the subject is not what the industry wants. 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Yes, I know, I’m caught in the same vice, in the same system. 

But what Cole wanted was something new. Because at the time, U.S. Black photographers did not exist. There was one, I’ve forgotten his name, [Gordon Parks] who became also a film director in Hollywood, but beside him nobody. You know, in the research – and I say it in the film – people would [stand and stare] in the train station and say, “Oh, look, the great Ernest Cole.” You know that’s a real story of a group of black photographers – men and women, young – who saw him and then they talked to him for an hour. And then they left, and they came back the next day with other friends to see what they could do for him. But those black photographers, it wasn’t until 20 years later that they became recognised. 

So, he was alone in no man’s land. You know? It was an extraordinary exception that House of Bondage (1967) became such an iconic book and a huge success. It had much more to do with the political situation than the fact that he was recognised as an artist. Even the notion of “artist” was different at the time, as a photographer. Today’s approach that it’s a great genre that is celebrated – no. Look at how late women photographers are being discovered. That’s new. That’s 40 years ago. That’s nothing. So, never forget the context of the time and then you understand how important that was, where that 26-year-old young man was at the time. It was a success but a limited success that did not include his further work. Because he was at the beginning of an incredible career that did not happen. And he became somehow deceived and there was no room for him, and exile was killing him. That’s the other part that people don’t understand, you know? It was not because of some sickness that he died. No. I know what exile is …

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Do you think only a person who has experienced exile themselves could have made the film and really understood it? There’s that story in the film where you know there’s his friend, who’s the sculptor, who goes into the record store and he has a massive heart attack – it’s like literal heartbreak. 

Stories like this. You know, when you have left your country for somewhere else you have thousands of stories, everyday stories, of what happened to so-and-so, and he died in an auto accident; he couldn’t go. I knew from Haiti people in New York, who every day… There was a man (I put his story in one of my narrative films), he would every week do his suitcase and say, “I am going back, I’m going back”. He never went back. He died in New York. So we have all those stories. 

Exile, it’s a terrible, terrible thing. Because you get news every day about your neighbour who got killed, about your former girlfriend or boyfriend who died under torture. You know, it’s not something that’s far away. It’s something that’s in you, every day. You have to deal with it. You know when he talks about this writer who commits suicide, his friend. Or the one who died in the record store. Or the one that went back because it was too hard for him and never recovered. Because he went back to the prison. So that’s what he lived through until he died. So, when – and that’s funny because Baldwin also has the same sentence which I use – you know, “People say that I was paranoiac, but I have all the reasons to be paranoiac.” You know? That’s the fact. Baldwin said the same thing. How come most black people don’t become crazy, because they have every right to become crazy? Their whole life is hell. 

This is what Fanon says to us, right? 

Yeah, sure. 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

And psychiatry and psychoanalysis haven’t quite caught up with what Fanon was saying. Even now the definitions of madness don’t take into account the conditions of our lives. 

Yeah, of course. And the most interesting part, that Baldwin caught, and Fanon as well, when talking about colonisation, is that the coloniser and the colonised are both sick by the fact of colonisation. And they need both to be treated in that sense. But until today, the coloniser has refused to see his part in that tandem. They still want to pretend they are the ones saying, “you are good; you are bad” or “we are the ones dominating still”, even though don’t even have the instrument any more. You know, Britain cannot call itself an Empire any more. France cannot call itself an Empire. Even the U.S. – who by the way don’t think of themselves as colonisers – they can’t even dominate the world the way they used to. 

Here’s a line I wrote down while watching the film, “We studied the white man’s language only to learn the terms of servitude.” For me there’s echoes of Fanon in there and it also rang so true. You know, how we end up aping the coloniser in our own ways. And so I guess my larger question relating not just to this film but to your body of work as a whole: within the world that we are describing – how have you managed to survive in an industry whose whole raison d’être is so counter to your values and mission? I think that’s a big enough question, let’s just leave it there. 

How do I survive? There’s no secret. I did some sort of guerrilla filmmaking on my own terms. It’s like, I made choices very early on not to do certain work and to be always in a position where I decide what I do, how I do it and you know there is not one single film I did that I didn’t have final cut. I decided very early on that I wanted to be the producer on my films as well because that’s where the decisions are taken. Living in Europe, living in America or elsewhere, if you want to make a film you have to go and beg a producer to produce your film, which means – how many black producers there are? How many white producers that understand where I come from? That knows about my story. 

It’s like, when you – I’ve told this anecdote plenty of times – let’s say you work in the industry in Hollywood, you go with a screenplay about James Baldwin. So, you go into that room, there are three, four or five people. None of them are black, or none of them have read Baldwin. But if you have a 20-minute meeting, the first ten minutes – if not 15 – you’re explaining [to] them who Baldwin is. And then, you have five minutes to tell them about your film. About the artistic choice, about the narrative, about the …  You lose. There is no way you can win. You know? So, the whole system is like this. That’s why people today are always saying “diversity” and all that. That’s bullshit. Because if you don’t have diversity at the level of the people who give the green lights, there is no change. That’s why there is still no change in Hollywood right now. Because they are still not there. If you have control, you will automatically have representation. If you have real control, power. Decision making power. 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

I agree with you but the people have to not just look different, they have to have a different ideology. 

Of course. Otherwise, it’s just superficial. 

It’s not just the people in the room who have to understand. It’s the people who green light the movie. Because that’s where the censorship starts. 

Yes!

So it’s the people who have the power to say, “You know what? I’m going to finance your film.” That’s where you need to be too. It’s the same thing for women. If in a room you have five deciders and not one of them is a woman, and hopefully a woman that understands the stakes, because you have women or black people or red or yellow people, who don’t get it. Or who, like in Fanon, are totally in the mind of the colonisers. So you need that where decisions are taken. Otherwise you are just fighting the wind. 

Can I just bring us back to the idea of how you’ve managed to make your work, this impressive body of work, that says what it says and runs counter to what is commonplace. And I want to think about what you do formally …

Yes, but formally is not the determining factor. One other aspect that is important is that I came into filmmaking through politics. So, for me, it was not about making money, it was not about having a livelihood through that. It [film] was in evidence to me as a fighting tool. So it was not about accepting conditions from anybody. It was not about being famous. That’s a decision I took very early on. So if I come in a room where they say, “Oh, you know what, Mr Peck, if you want to make your film this and this way, we won’t finance it.” Then I will leave the room and I will say “Okay, then I won’t make the film with you.” To be able to do that, you have to be sure in your head that you won’t have a big car, that you won’t have a three-garage house. If you don’t have that in your head, you cannot – how do you say? – survive in that industry. You can only survive when you know, well I can be “naked”. I don’t care. I don’t need your car, I don’t need your whatever. But I want to make the film the way I want. That’s the way. If you’re totally indulged in this consumerist way of being in the industry then no …

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

What I’m hearing is that you’re talking about service to something bigger. That you make your work for a bigger purpose. 

No. You have to make yourself “un-buyable”… No, that’s not the term. 

What would you say in French?

You have to be… Il faut être dans une position ou on peut pas faire pression sur vous: économiquement, moralement, vous devez pouvoir dire “Non” sans avoir peur de perdre votre confort. Voilà. Donc ça veut dire qu’on peut pas vous faire de chantage. C’est ca qui vous donne votre force et votre liberté.¹ 

That’s what I decided very early on in my career. I will never be in a position where you can pressure me to accept your rules otherwise I won’t have a career. I never gave that authority to anybody. This is something I learned very early on with Baldwin. I don’t let anybody decide for me who I am. Or give me points, like “Oh, Peck you’re good.” Or not good. No. “No. You don’t have that right. You don’t have that capacity.” You don’t even know even 0.5% of who I am. I don’t know who I am. So, how the hell can you know who I am? Unless you have a little box where you put me. But that’s your problem; that’s again: Fanon, Baldwin. The problem is not me, the problem is you. I can’t talk for your ignorance of who I am. I know who you are; I know your history because I learned it at school. I know how you think; I know your pains; I know your illusions. I know all that. The same way the black nanny knows more about the white family where she works.

That was so moving, that bit. 

I did my homework. I lived in many countries. Baldwin lived in many countries. Baldwin knew more about the French than the French. I knew more about German philosophy, German history than the normal German citizen. I went to university and I learned that. I made a film on the young Karl Marx. No German director has made a film on Marx to this day. So then you are giving me points, you are judging me, you are telling me how good I am or not good I am. I don’t give you that authority. From what position do you critique my work? Not you personally, but everyone in the dominant world. 

But you were asking how I manage. And that’s it: you have to question that at every step along the way, to make the right decision. It’s not a clear recipe. You know? I understand. I have friends who are in the business, I have students, who have a great career but they tell me, “The films I am making right now are not the films I thought I would be making. But what do I do? I have a mortgage. I have a big house. I have five children now. They all want to go to university. What do I do?” And I don’t, I can’t, criticise them. They made a choice and now they have unfortunately … Unless they say you know what, “Let’s sell the house, let’s sell the cars. Hey guys let’s live elsewhere where we don’t need that much money to live.” 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Yeah, sure. 

That’s a human decision. That’s why work or your artistry etcetera is not separate from who you are, or what is your role in the food chain. You know, again it’s the Marxist thing: also where are you in the production process? 

Woah it’s refreshing to talk to someone who is, would you say, openly a Marxist?

Let’s just say that I learned what the capitalistic society is. ‘Cause we are still in one. Since the 19th century. The capitalist society is carrying the whole world today. Even China and Russia. So yes, I learned to analyse it, and nobody has done it better than Marx and Engels. Without the dogmatic part, or the part that was used from them by political movements, that’s separate. But the economical and social, and even artistic analysis of Marx is unequalled today. You know, I use Marx the same way I use Baldwin. They develop my capacity of analysis. Or Fanon. And Fanon used Marx by the way. And Baldwin used Marx. 

Does someone like Edward Said’s work mean much to you? 

Yes, yes of course. 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Because there’s a kind of resonance, you know, about the way you’ve mastered conventional western narrative – a lot like he masters it in his work – and yet you sort of deconstruct it. And you use the term ‘to deconstruct’ quite frequently, can you talk a bit about deconstructing and what it means to you? 

Well, if you analyse the building of Capitalism which starts with incredible genocides (that’s why I say in some of my films, learn your history, cause otherwise you can’t think properly. You don’t have all the elements). If you go to the origin, which is the accumulation of capital to allow you with technology to produce an incredible amount of riches, or consume goods. It started because at one point … all the cotton was everywhere – in India, in China, in Europe, in Africa. Every society produced cotton. But the one thing that changed is that at some point in the United States they had unlimited access to land, after the killing of the indigenous and unlimited access to labour. Okay? It’s called savage capitalism. That’s how it started and then spread. And when that group of people or that system started to see themselves as the centre of the world then of course … I recommend that you watch Exterminate All the Brutes … When they see themselves as the centre of the world and the rest on the map is just savage, that’s ingrained. That’s why even today, I don’t believe that most of the western world understand that story yet. Most people in the western world still think in terms that they are the centre. They are the ones deciding who is civilised, who is not civilised. Who is calling the shots. Even though they don’t even have the elements to decide. You know I was saying earlier today, you know, there is no Empire capable of controlling the world like there used to be until the Second World War. There was East and West; well they got rid of the East but the West cannot say that they won. 

I’ve been told I have to stop in a moment. But I wanted to talk to you a bit about your process with archive and how you mix real archival material with newer stuff across your work and your process of collaboration with your editor? I know that’s a lot… These are big questions. 

Yes, I can rapidly – well the use of archive is the same, it’s linked to what I was saying. My story was never told. But my story was not documented. So I don’t have photos since the invention of photography that document my story. I’m usually a victim in those photos. The coloniser photographed my mother, my brothers in a very deteriorating condition, as a conqueror. So what do I do? I don’t tell my story? No. I deconstruct. And I make choices. I make choices about which one of those photos I deconstruct, which one I use to tell my story now. So that’s why, I don’t care, I come from Haiti. I use rubbers that were tyres to make a sculpture. I can use pipes to make a sculpture. That’s how I work. I use whatever I get that exists to tell my own story. So that’s why you will see all that material. And unfortunately for artists from the third world, we have different “casques” [hats] we need to have. We need to be archaeologists; we need to be anthropologists of where we come from. We need to keep our archives. And we need to deal with today’s world. And you can’t say that I am doing this and not this ‘cause it’s linked. So that’s why I try to have all the different layers. Whether, by the way, documentary or fiction. 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (c) Ernest Cole

Yes. 

Fiction, by the way, I did a film on the genocide in Rwanda. I filmed the real places because I knew they would disappear. I tried in my set design to use real objects that were there during the genocide. 

It’s really believable. 

It’s not about believable. It’s to … I make sure that those things survive. That the generation further will say “Oh, that’s how it looks. That’s how that element in this scene really exists.” Because maybe it burnt down, it doesn’t exist anymore. 

This is where historical filmmaking becomes a humanist endeavour. It is real mastery of the master’s tools. Whereby you don’t have to make up a new form… 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are already plenty of wheels. 

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London, October 2010 – with thanks to Margaret PR and the London Film Festival 

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