Frank Cole

A Life is about a man who lives by facing death.

Something of a formal and thematic template for his subsequent work, Frank Cole’s first short film brings a terrifying mixture of intimacy and distance to bear on his aging grandparents.

His life transformed by the passing of his grandfather in the early 1990s, Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole found himself obsessed with the idea of death. Determined to overcome his fear, he resolved to cross the Sahara Desert by camel, training for years to prepare himself for the emotional and physical ordeal. Cole filmed his travels from Mauritania to the Sudan with a 16mm Bolex, capturing the harsh reality of the desert environment with an unflinching intimacy. Cole offers a deeply personal, yet distinctly Western, perspective on the desert as a space of Romantic sublimity.

A documentary about the Canadian documentary filmmaker Frank Cole.

A Life is about a man who lives by facing death.

A Life is about a man who lives by facing death.

A Life is about a man who lives by facing death.

Something of a formal and thematic template for his subsequent work, Frank Cole’s first short film brings a terrifying mixture of intimacy and distance to bear on his aging grandparents.

His life transformed by the passing of his grandfather in the early 1990s, Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole found himself obsessed with the idea of death. Determined to overcome his fear, he resolved to cross the Sahara Desert by camel, training for years to prepare himself for the emotional and physical ordeal. Cole filmed his travels from Mauritania to the Sudan with a 16mm Bolex, capturing the harsh reality of the desert environment with an unflinching intimacy. Cole offers a deeply personal, yet distinctly Western, perspective on the desert as a space of Romantic sublimity.

His life transformed by the passing of his grandfather in the early 1990s, Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole found himself obsessed with the idea of death. Determined to overcome his fear, he resolved to cross the Sahara Desert by camel, training for years to prepare himself for the emotional and physical ordeal. Cole filmed his travels from Mauritania to the Sudan with a 16mm Bolex, capturing the harsh reality of the desert environment with an unflinching intimacy. Cole offers a deeply personal, yet distinctly Western, perspective on the desert as a space of Romantic sublimity.

His life transformed by the passing of his grandfather in the early 1990s, Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole found himself obsessed with the idea of death. Determined to overcome his fear, he resolved to cross the Sahara Desert by camel, training for years to prepare himself for the emotional and physical ordeal. Cole filmed his travels from Mauritania to the Sudan with a 16mm Bolex, capturing the harsh reality of the desert environment with an unflinching intimacy. Cole offers a deeply personal, yet distinctly Western, perspective on the desert as a space of Romantic sublimity.