Raoul Peck’s Documentary On Photographer Ernest Cole Acquired by Magnolia Pictures And mk2 Leading Into Cannes Market
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Magnolia Pictures and mk2 have acquired rights to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s Untitled Ernest Cole Documentary, about South Africa’s first Black freelance photographer.
Magnolia’s deal is for North American rights, while mk2 takes international; mk2 is launching international sales at the Cannes Market, which opens Tuesday.
Cole (1940-1970) documented apartheid in South Africa not as an outsider but someone who experienced its cruelties. Under the country’s racist system, Black people could only be employed as laborers; nonetheless, Cole became a photographer, a defiance of rules that made him a “banned person” and forced him to flee to the United States.
He continued making important documentary photography in New York, but at his death he had published a single book, House of Bondage (1967) and the whereabouts of much of his unpublished work remained unknown.
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