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Matthias De Groof is assistant professor in film studies, specializing in de/postcolonial film theory. He holds MA degrees in philosophy, international relations, and cinema studies, and held research fellowships at NYU, Bayreuth’s Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, Waseda University, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and Amsterdam University. Matthias has lectured internationally and authored publications in leading journals such as Interventions, Third Text, and Imaginations. His edited book, Lumumba in the Arts, was listed among LitHub’s top 100 “books to escape the news.” Beyond academia, he is frequently invited to speak in cultural settings and to write for magazines. Matthias is also a filmmaker; his films have been screened internationally.
RCC Research Project: Ecologies of Indigenous Filmmaking in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Selected Publications:
- with Petna Katondolo. “Mediating Africa Today Through the Cinema of YOLÉ!Africa: A Conversation Between Matthias De Groof and Petna Ndaliko Katondolo.” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 52, no. 3 (2025): 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2025.52.3.13.
- Tantulum. Cobra Film Yole!Africa NIME, 2025.
- “From Leopold III’s Master of the Jungle to Contemporary Congolese Eco-Cinema: Postcolonial Resonance.” In Unfinished Histories: Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium, edited by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture. Leuven University Press, 2022.
- “Anticolonial Aesthetics: Towards Eco-Cinema.” Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies 24, no. 7 (2022): 1142–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2054007.
- “Columbus on a Spaceship, or: Decolonising the Anthropocene.” Viewfinder Magazine, no. 114 (2020). https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/viewfinder/articles/columbus-on-a-spaceship-or-decolonising-the-anthropocene/.
- “Congocene: Congolese Cinema in / on / against the Anthropocene.” In Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality: Opposing Colonialism, Anti-Semitism, Turbo-Nationalism, edited by Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, and Sophie Uitz. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.