Guido Convents was a Belgian film historian who specialised in colonial and non-Western cinema.
Guido Convents (1956–2025) studied at the Catholic University of Leuven and the Faculty of Letters in Lisbon. A Belgian historian and anthropologist, he specialised in non-Western cinema and authored numerous scientific bibliographic references on the subject, particularly focusing on colonial and contemporary Africa, the history of fairs and annual markets, cinema and Catholics, early cinema in Belgium (1894–1914), and cinema during the First World War, paying particular attention to German occupation policy in Belgium. He also specialised in the biography of the Dominican priest Félix Morlion (1904–1987).
Guido Convents has been publishing on cinema in Africa since the 1980s, with a particular focus on the Portuguese-speaking countries—namely Mozambique, the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Rwanda and Burundi. In 2006, he published Images et démocratie. Les Congolais face au cinéma et à l'audiovisuel. Une histoire politico-culturelle du Congo des Belges à la République démocratique du Congo (1896–2006). He has given numerous lectures on this topic in Africa and Europe over the years.
He has published seven books on African cinema. He worked as a journalist for the World Catholic Association for Communication (SIGNIS) in Brussels. He has been president of the Afrika Filmfestival in Leuven, Belgium, since 1996.
Photo: © Blitz163 via Wikimedia Commons
