Frank Cole

Legendary Canadian documentary film maker Frank COLE (1954, Canada - 2000, Mali) grew up in a family that moved a lot because his father was a Canadian diplomat. Frank would later settle in Ottawa where he studied languages at the Carleton University and later film production at the Algonquin College. In 1989, following the death of his grandfather, Cole set out to cross the Sahara alone. With his year-long journey, recorded with his Bolex camera, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records. Over the next ten years Frank was creating his documentary Life Without Death (2000). He didn't await its premiere in Paris in 2000, though, for he returned to the Sahara to cross the desert again. In October 2000, he was murdered in Mali by one or possibly two bandits. The mystery of his murder has never been solved.
The tribute to the outstanding film maker Frank Cole by the IFFR in 2010 also served as the launch for a new book, Life Without Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole, edited by Mike Hoolboom and Tom McSorley.

He would later settle in Ottawa where he studied languages at Carleton University and later film production at Algonquin College. He earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for his 1990 solo crossing of the Sahara Desert from Mauritania to the Red Sea alone on camel. In 2000 he returned to cross the Sahara again but from the Red Sea back to the Atlantic Ocean. In late October 2000 he was murdered by one or possibly two bandits.