REVIEW—ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (2024)

Directed, written and produced by Raoul Peck (whose 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro impressed me) Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (which had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival) applies historic focus on Ernest Cole, a photographer who gained brief fame for exposing the horrors of Apartheid, subsequently escaped South Africa, becoming a restless exile in the United States and Europe, eventually depressing into homelessness and obscurity.

The first South African freelance photographer, Cole became radicalized by associations with other talented young black South Africans—journalists, photographers, jazz musicians, and political leaders in the burgeoning anti-apartheid movement—and applied himself to chronicling the evils and daily social effects of apartheid.  Able to escape South Africa, he fled to New York City with his negatives and prints and enthused Magnum Photos to help him secure a publishing deal with Random House, resulting in House of Bondage (1967), which at the time became the definitive exposé of apartheid.  The images of House of Bondage achieved a global audience.

 

But his experience of the United States proved to be disquieting, unsettling, as the promise he anticipated capsized into disillusioned awareness that racism was as rampant in the United States as it had been in South Africa, if not even more dangerous.  Unable to return home to South Africa, his life became a race against expiring visas and diminishing economic resources.  Commissioned by the Ford Foundation to chronicle Black family life in the rural South and the urban ghetto from “an outsider’s perspective”, Cole questioned what was expected of him and how it could be presumed that he was ever an outsider when what he witnessed in the impoverished lives of Blacks in America proved no different than what he had witnessed and chronicled in South Africa.  “I’m homesick,” he repeated frequently, “but I can’t go home.”

 

He gave up photography.  Became lost and homeless (thus, the “lost” of the film’s title).  His film negatives likewise disappeared (a compounded loss).  Cole died of cancer at the early age of 49, never able to return home to South Africa, never able to adjust to his exile.  The “found” part of the film’s title proved to be the mystery at the core of Cole’s biography and the film’s suggested future traction.  In April 2018, Cole’s heirs—namely a nephew who had founded the Ernest Cole Family Trust—were notified by a Swedish bank that a collection of 60,000 meticulously archived negatives had been discovered in a vault in Stockholm.  The bank was not forthcoming in disclosing who had placed the negatives in the vault or who had paid for their storage, but included were many of the original negatives he had taken in South Africa and several notes that helped shape House of Bondage.  How had they ended up in Sweden?  Why was the bank so tight-lipped, claiming they had no records of who deposited and paid for the storage?

 

Further, the Hasselblad Foundation has clung to 504 of Cole’s photographs, whose estimated value is in the neighborhood of one million Euros.  The ownership of these is in legal dispute, with the Hasselblad Foundation refusing to relinquish the photos to Cole’s estate until they can prove ownership.  As of 2020, the legal dispute between Cole's estate and the Hasselblad Foundation is ongoing.

 

Peck’s documentary reveals an artist whose initial energy awakened the world to the injustice of apartheid but who was himself undermined by the judgmental machinations of racism that left him tethered to a miserable past that he was doomed to repeat in America.  The psychological price of exile crippled his spirit and, in turn, his artistry.  One can only imagine what he might have accomplished had he been able to feel at home in the United States and if he had received the support he needed and deserved.  It never ceases to amaze and anger me that frequently it isn’t until an artist is dead that their work gains the financial value that would have benefited the artist while alive.  Peck’s film has at least provided some recompense by insuring that Cole is not forgotten, not the least of which is attention to an earlier documentary on Cole’s life made by Jürgen Schadeberg, available in its entirety on YouTube.  In 1958, Jürgen Schadeberg, the picture editor of Drum magazine, employed Cole as his assistant.  That experience shaped Cole’s artistry.  In conjunction, Peck’s Ernest Cole: Lost and Found and Schadeberg’s earlier work Ernest Cole underscore what has been found in Cole’s life and effectively labor to offset what was feared and believed lost.

THURSDAY THROWBACK: INLAND EMPIRE—The San Rafael Film Center Q&A With David Lynch (Friday, January 19, 2007)

"Transcendental meditation speaks of inner preservation.  Transcendental meditation gives you peace of mind."—“Jesus Children of America”, Stevie Wonder.

 In the September-October 2006 issue of Film Comment, Paul Schrader has a thought-provoking write-up-"Canon Fodder" [subsequently incorporated into his archive]—wherein he juggles his quandaries regarding what criteria should be used to determine cinematic masterworks.  If there is to be anything close to a film canon, he suggests, it must be based on necessarily refurbished criteria, seven of which he posits for consideration: beauty, unity of form and subject matter, tradition, repeatability, viewer engagement, morality, and the one which I feel applies here—strangeness.

"Harold Bloom," Schrader writes, "uses the term 'strangeness' in lieu of the more common 'originality.'  Strangeness is the type of originality that we can 'never altogether assimilate.'  The concept of strangeness enriches the traditional notion of originality, adding the connotations of unpredictability, unknowability, and magic.  To say that Jean Cocteau was original seems somehow thin; he was more than original, he was strange.  Originality is a prerequisite for the canon—the matter at hand must be expressed in a fresh way—but it is the addition of strangeness to originality that gives these works their enduring status.  This strangeness, this unpredictable burst of originality, is the attribute of a work of art that causes successive generations to puzzle over it, to debate it, to be awed by it.  Strangeness is the Romantic's term and Hegel's and everyone else's thereafter—until supplanted by the more recent 'defamiliarization.' " (Film Comment, 42:5, p. 44, fn. Omitted.)

I have found no more accurate a summation of the work of David Lynch and his current project Inland Empire than Schrader's indirect description.  One might even come to think of this posited criteria of strangeness as the Lynchian imperative.

From the moment reactions started trickling in for Inland Empire, I knew the film would require repeated viewings.  So I caught it first at the Palm Springs International Film Festival—where there were surprisingly few walkouts among the film's capacity Camelot audience—and then again night before last at the San Rafael Film Center where David Lynch was in attendance to introduce the film and to field queries afterwards.  Arriving at the Film Center two hours in advance, I was stunned to discover a rush line halfway down the block.  Prudently, I had ordered my ticket online, picked it up at will call and joined Frako Loden and Joe Loree in line.  They were conversing with a young fellow who had been at the front of the rush line since noon.  He was jubilant.  He had just been given a free ticket by someone who couldn't attend the screening.  All very strange—and wonderful—indeed.

David Lynch introduced Inland Empire by offering a man with "an interesting stake in the present but always with a beautiful, haunting wind of the past; the rocker with the voice of gold"—Chris Isaak—who came on stage to perform a Mexican rancheria and his hit "Wicked Game", which Chris reminded his audience had been used in one of Lynch's movies.  "I probably wouldn't have had a career," Isaak stated, "if not for David Lynch."

"Baloney," Lynch protested.

"Seriously," Isaak insisted, "I remember I went to Warner Brothers and said, 'Can we get a video for this?' and they said, 'No.'  I said, 'Well, David Lynch said he'd make one on his own time.'  I remember it and I thank you for it."

Lynch then asked Isaak to play him a couple of his beautiful chords while he read a quote from the Aitareya Upanishad: "We are like the spider.  We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.  This is true for the entire universe."  Lynch then wished his audience a good experience viewing Inland Empire.

Three hours later Lynch returned to the stage to a standing ovation and prolonged applause. San Rafael Film Center's programmer Richard Peterson stole the first question by way of commenting on Laura Dern's tour de force performance.  "Laura Dern may not get an Academy Award," Lynch qualified, "but in a couple of years people will look back on this year and they'll say, definitely, she gave one of the best performances, if not the greatest performance in my book."

Understanding that, since Eraserhead, Mary Sweeney has usually done Lynch's editing, Lynch was asked how he came to the decision to edit Inland Empire himself, what the experience was like for him, and what software system he used?

Final Cut Pro, Lynch responded.  It's great to work with an editor, he added, but it's so beautiful to get your hands on.  You discover things that maybe you wouldn't discover before. That's the feeling, digging down deeper.  Now, with the digital world, a filmmaker has so much more control.  "I'm never going to go back to film," Lynch announced.  "Film is a beautiful medium, so beautiful, but it's a dinosaur.  It's heavy.  It's slow.  It tears.  Watermarks.  Colors don't match in the prints.  The bad ones go to the Midwest and the good ones to New York." He concedes film is beautiful when you get it right but there's so much down time to a film. "You die the death.  It's unreal slow and you die.  I don't want to die."

One fellow commended Lynch for the dream-like quality of his films, necessitating repeated viewings, and their Derridean sense where something is always off-center, unseen, but poetically pervasive.  "That's very beautiful," Lynch thanked him (even though the audience groaned at the somewhat pretentious mention of Jacques Derrida), "and poetry is a great thing.  Cinema is a language that can say abstractions.  Like the right combo of words will conjure something magical, cinema has this way of saying abstractions.  There are things that are communicated that can't be said in words except by a poet and we feel-think these things, they're so beautiful the language of film.  You need a concrete story—you may not say that [Inland Empire] is a concrete story but to me it is a concrete story—holding a certain number of abstractions."  In contrast to his audience, Lynch liked the word "Derridean", didn't appear to be that familiar with Derrida, but quipped, "You learn something new every day."

Asked about his sound design, Lynch responded, "Sound and picture moving together in time is the most beautiful thing.  It's all based on ideas.  When you catch an idea, you don't catch the whole thing all at once, but you catch idea fragments and these fragments draw others and it goes like this [Lynch wiggles his fingers like a shimmering wave pattern] and the thing starts building.  But it's always following the idea, translating the idea, staying true to that idea.  Then, for every single element, you can tell if it's not right.  And if it's not right, you can sort of feel—based on thinking about that idea—what will feel correct.  So sound, being one element, you get the hard effects and the more abstract effects and music to marry to the picture.  I'll feel how music comes in and how it swells and how it goes and how it disappears and something else comes with it. You're getting a feel based on the idea."

Asked where Lynch gets his ideas—if from dreams, from past lives, from paintings he's seen—he responded that they come from all over the place.  When you get an idea, like we all get ideas he explained, something is not there and then—bingo!—it enters your mind.  There it is.  Whatever the idea is, sometimes they come with such a thrill and you fall in love.  You see it in an instant and you fall in love. Then you write it down. The reason you write it down is you don't want to forget it.  Even though an idea might come in only a moment, you might write for a long time, several sentences, paragraphs, depending upon the idea.  So much comes in one moment.  It's such a thrill to be in love and you write it down so when you read it again, it will all come back.  Then you just follow that.

Asked if he remembers his dreams in detail, Lynch asserted he doesn't dream, or doesn't remember his dreams, and basically doesn't get his ideas from dreams.  Though he loves dream logic and that's what makes his films so "dreamy."

Asked how much he changes his original ideas in the editing process, Lynch stated that scene by scene, he stays true to his ideas.  Then he sees the whole thing and that, a lot of the time, is a major nightmare and a readjustment.  Then there are changes for the sake of the whole.  At some point he sees the film with other people, not to get notes but to feel it, and that's another nightmare and another bunch of adjustments.  He proceeds like that until the whole thing feels correct.

Asked about his forays into the horrific, Lynch described the world of a film.  The horror or torment of a story is strangely as beautiful.  "It's a contrast thing."  Then he falls in love for a second reason because he sees what sentiment can do to it.  It's all "blissful."  Peterson commented that Lynch had just written a book Catching The Big Fish, which is about capturing or experiencing bliss through the use of transcendental meditation, which Lynch practices to broaden his creativity.  Consciousness is all we have, Lynch replied.  We don't think about it much but—if we didn't have it—we wouldn't exist or—if we did exist—we wouldn't know it. "There are people who think that transcendental meditation is a religion or a cult, but it's not a religion; it's a mental technique that allows you to dive within and experience a field that belongs to all human beings, the whole thing.  In Vedic science that unified field of oneness that we can all access is called atman.  The true self.  Know thyself.  It's right there for everybody.  You enliven that by experiencing it and life gets real real good."

Inland Empire could be seen as a horror film about Hollywood and so one fellow was curious whether Lynch actually felt about Hollywood that way.  No, he answered resoundly.  It's just a story that came from ideas.  He lives in Hollywood but the idea of the film isn't anything he's experienced or seen or read about.  It's just an idea that came that he fell in love with that focuses on one angle of Hollywood.  It wasn't even so much that he wanted to make a film about Hollywood.  His original idea didn't even have anything to do with Hollywood; but, the film grew out of the ideas.  Lynch loves Hollywood.  He loves the Golden Age of Hollywood, its magic, and he even likes the way Hollywood fell.  But now it's coming back.  Digital's here and the Internet is here.  Hollywood is always changing and Inland Empire inflects only one part of it, much in a comparable way as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.  A person can enter Sunset Boulevard and feel another whole beautiful world about Hollywood.  Films are incredible things that way.

Frako Loden asked Lynch how his methods of getting his movies into theater houses is changing.  "I'm not self-distributing," Lynch responded, "but I'm not going through a regular distribution company on this film.  I've got a website and—during the course of the website—I started selling my first feature Eraserhead, short films, and other things and then meeting some great people, making relationships, and getting a conduit into the stores.  We thought, wouldn't it be great to have the ability to send Inland Empire that route?  Traditionally you go with a distributor because the distributor will give you an advance.  But things aren't happening in the movie industry—Inland Empire especially scares distributors (and you understand why)—so advances, like in the music business, are going down.  Then when you do all the work distributing a film, you don't get another nickel beyond the advance and so you think, why don't we just try it?  And travel to the beautiful Bay Area and meet people and meet the great theater owners and try something different?"

Lynch was asked if the look and feel of digital has changed his filmmaking?  He admitted that he started not knowing if he was making anything.  He shot scene by scene experimenting with the Sony PD150 for stuff on the website and at first he felt it was a toy camera but then he started liking the camera more and more.  He started shooting scenes with it and, as more ideas came and developed into a bigger story, he didn't want to switch horses in midstream, so he stayed with the Sony PD150, which is not hi-def, but low-def. T hen he did tests with the low-def upping the resolution to film and he was surprised how good it looked.  It had its own feel, not like film, but something he "kind of loved."  It reminded him of old 35mm film where you don't see everything so sharp and "it sort of strangely makes room to dream."  Further, digital allows him "a tweakability for color."  He can work with it before it gets transferred to film.  He actually ended up with more control than if he had set up timers.  For Lynch it's beautiful and it will only get better.  If there's something that's not too sharp or pleasing right now, just like with pro tools there will be a thousand plug-ins he can use to get it to be the way he wants it.

Asked what the original concept had been for Inland Empire, Lynch said it would have to have been Laura Dern herself.  He was outside and Laura Dern came walking down the sidewalk. She said, "Oh, hello David."

He said, "Hello, Laura."

She said, "I'm your new neighbor."

He said, "No kidding?" He hadn't seen her for a while so it was very pleasing to discover she was his new neighbor.

She said, "David, we've got to do something again."

He said, "Yes, that would be so beautiful." He started thinking about her and the film got written. Laura stuck with him because, honestly, the first day he showed up with his toy camera, it didn't look like he was really shooting a movie.  Later on, she saw how beautiful the result was because filming with the Sony PD150 allows 40 minutes of tape, providing the time to discuss and delve into scenes.  "Maybe some magic is caught that wouldn't be caught otherwise," Lynch emphasized, "so pretty soon you start falling in love with this thing."

Asked how he had described the role to Laura Dern before shooting, Lynch explained that normally when you begin shooting a film there's a script and the lead actress, especially, knows the whole story; but, with Inland Empire, Dern didn't know what was going to happen and—for that matter—neither did Lynch.  But they approached it scene by scene.  Within each scene they could identify the character, talk about the scene in relation to the character, locate what they could rehearse, and what they were prepared to shoot.  When they went to the next scene, they had the first scene as a point of reference.  If you're true to that method of working, Lynch proposed, it doesn't mean that the film will always work out but—if you're true to it—you have a chance.

Considering that digital filmmaking is assumedly more cost-effective, Lynch was asked if that opened him up to experiment more with his ideas.  No, Lynch answered, it's the same thing—ideas and translating them—it's just that digital filmmaking is more about "getting the thing than waiting for the thing to move around."  It's more friendly to the process and the scenes.

Asked how much time it took him to make Inland Empire, Lynch replied three years, two years ("and probably more") of which he didn't know what he was doing.

Just out of curiosity, one fellow asked, did you decide to include the rabbit elements in the editing room or when you were generating the story?  The rabbits are an idea, Lynch explained, and you don't know where an idea is going to go.  It goes one way and then you start thinking and then it goes there.  You start one thing and you don't know where it's going to go.  It unfolds.

At this point—no doubt exhausted with having to explain his creative vision—Lynch suggested that Chris Isaak return to the stage for another song or two.  Ever the jokester, Isaak assured Lynch he would try to keep things moving but had to admit it was a long movie.  The weird thing, he added, is that he was listening to the audience's questions without having had the chance to see the movie.  Everyone's seen the movie but him.  The audience collectively went, "Awwwwww."  "I came here and I sang and I didn't get to see the movie.  I'll sing again and whatever I have to do to see it."  He then asked for hands of how many people liked the movie.  Then for how many people understood the movie.  Then as a capper to the evening Isaak insisted that Lynch play maracas for the final song, even giving Lynch a maracas solo.

Strange, indeed. Wonderfully, memorably, strange.

Cross-published at Sceen Anarchy.

01/26/07 UPDATE: Peter Martin's friend Wells Dunbar caught the Austin, Texas, screening of Inland Empire at Austin's infamous Alamo Drafthouse and has contributed Dunbar's reportage of the ensuing Q&A to Screen Anarchy.  Within Dunbar's masterful synopsis, I really like this description: " 'It's kinda laid a mindfuck on me,' Laura Dern snarls in a bruised drawl, somewhere in the final third of David Lynch's Inland Empire.  An impassioned laugh from the audience confirmed she wasn't alone.  Hair disheveled, face dirtied and with a bloody bruise edging out from her famously malleable mouth, Dern makes the declaration as one Susan Blue, a beatdown Southern belle fallen on hard times following her marriage to an Eastern Bloc refugee of ill repute.  Or something."

PORCELAIN WAR (2024)—REVIEW

Porcelain War (2024), the documentary film directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev that won this year’s Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize, follows the experience of Ukrainian artists as they face the current Russian occupation in Ukraine. In a masterful double-helix it shows how artists must soldier on in the face of horrific adversity and how soldiers must protect artists or risk erasure of their culture. It tempers scenes of unimaginable destruction and death with meditative observations of nature through a cycle of seasons and the heartfelt determination of artistry. 

What might have been nothing more than an intrusion into a war zone, Porcelain War accomplishes much more through a multidisciplinary and layered approach. Yes, there is the shocking and heartbreaking aerial drone footage of cities ravaged by bombing and the icy remove from people being killed far below, but these are balanced with exquisitely tender animations engineered by Blu Blu Studios that bring Anya Stasenko’s delicate designs painted on porcelain to life, most notably in the recount of the takeover and evacuation of Crimea. DakhaBrakha, a Ukrainian folk music quartet who combine the musical styles of several ethnic groups, add a resonant emotional layer that expresses alarm, resistance and resolution. 

In the pause after viewing the film, a prayer surfaces that this senseless invasion be finished so that the Ukrainian people can return to family, friends, culture and nation and the lives of expendable Russian soldiers stop being sent into battle like fuel for an unquenchable fire.  

Porcelain War is a Picturehouse Release, runs 87 minutes, is in English, Russian, and Ukrainian with English subtitles, and is rated R. It opens Friday, January 3, 2025 at the AMC Metreon Theater, San Francisco and the Smith Rafael Film Center, San Rafael. It opens one week later, January 10, 2025 at The Flicks in Boise, Idaho.