Cinema of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; French: Cinéma de la République Démocratique du Congo) originated with educational and propaganda films during the colonial era of Belgian Congo. Development of a local film industry started after the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence from Belgium in 1960, but was hampered by constant civil war.
Colonial era (1908-1960)
Colonial cinema in the age of empire According to historian Alexandre Ramos, the emergence of colonial cinema coincided with the height of European imperial expansion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when colonialism became a subject of widespread public interest rather than one confined to political elites. The "Scramble for Africa" (c. 1881–1914), during which European powers rapidly partitioned much of the African continent among themselves, attracted considerable attention across Europe. This growing interest was encouraged by newspapers, exhibitions, advertising, literature, and other forms of popular culture, which helped increase public interest by promoting the achievements of the colonial empires.
Representations of colonized peoples and territories became a recurring feature of European cultural life. Ramos explains that newspapers often covered military campaigns, geographic discoveries, and colonial affairs, while scientific journals, travel books, novels, plays, and illustrated magazines introduced readers to Europe's overseas empires. Stories of exploration and conquest, whether based on historical events or fictional narratives, cultivated enthusiasm for overseas expansion and helped make colonial rule seem normal and acceptable. Adventure literature was one of the most popular ways these ideas reached readers. Books such as King Solomon's Mines (1885) by H. Rider Haggard, How I Found Livingstone (1872) by Henry Morton Stanley, and the Portuguese travel narrative De Angola à Contra-Costa (1886) by Hermenegildo Capelo and Roberto Ivens presented Africa as an exciting and little-known land waiting to be explored. Read by many educated Europeans, these works helped portray colonial expansion as legitimate, heroic, and civilizing.
Ramos argues that, in this cultural setting, it is not surprising that colonial themes appeared soon after cinema was invented. Early filmmakers produced films that reflected what audiences were already interested in, including stories about empire that were popular in books and newspapers. Just one year after the first public film screening, La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (1895), the Lumière brothers commissioned their first moving images filmed in a colonial territory, Alger: déchargement au port (1896), which was filmed by Alexandre Promio in French Algeria. This became one of the earliest examples of filmmaking in a colonial setting and began a long tradition of portraying colonial life and imperial power on screen. Colonial subjects remained common in cinema throughout the twentieth century and continued into the twenty-first century. Even after the end of colonial rule, films such as Gandhi (1982), Out of Africa (1985), and Tabu (2012) continued to explore colonial history and its legacy.
Although Belgium controlled a large colonial territory in Africa through the Belgian Congo, Ruanda-Urundi, and the Lado Enclave, it was not one of the leading European colonial powers. Compared with countries such as Britain, France, and Germany, Belgium had a smaller population, a weaker military, and less political influence. Because of this, the Belgian government depended more on diplomacy and forms of cultural propaganda, including cinema, to justify, promote, and maintain their colonial possessions.
Development of Belgian colonial cinema
Congo Free State under Leopold II Belgium was a constitutional monarchy with a federal parliamentary system during the colonial period. Its early colonial involvement was mainly shaped by the personal initiative of King Leopold II, rather than by a strong national policy in favour of overseas expansion. Leopold II sought to establish Belgian influence in Central Africa, particularly in the Congo Basin, which led to the creation of the Congo Free State (1885–1908), a territory that was initially controlled as his personal possession rather than as a formal Belgian colony. To support his plans, Leopold II set up the Association internationale du Congo (AIC) in 1879, which replaced earlier groups such as the Comité d'études du Haut-Congo. These organizations helped fund exploration missions in the region, including those led by Henry Morton Stanley. The King also invested his personal fortune and took loans from the Belgian state, pledging his "future territories in Africa as collateral".
At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, European powers officially recognized King Leopold II's control over the Congo Basin and agreed that he would personally govern the new state created under the AIC framework. The Belgian government largely accepted this arrangement, which allowed Leopold II to manage colonial affairs with minimal parliamentary oversight and without regular reporting to government ministers. By the early twentieth century, however, the Congo Free State faced growing financial problems and increasing criticism from other countries. Reports of forced labor, violence, and harsh rule led to public concern in Belgium and abroad. In 1908, the Belgian parliament voted to annex the territory, which then ended Leopold II's personal control and placed it under the Belgian state. The colony was renamed the Belgian Congo (1908–1960). In 1919, after the First World War and under the League of Nations mandate system, Belgium was given control of Ruanda-Urundi, which had been part of German East Africa. This arrangement was confirmed in 1923, and both territories remained under Belgian rule until the mid-twentieth century.
Colonial expansion was not, at first, a widely supported national policy in Belgium. Historians such as Jean Stengers point out that many sectors of Belgian society, including political and economic elites, were cautious about overseas expansion and often preferred to focus on economic growth at home. This limited interest was also seen in Belgium's neutral stance in earlier colonial issues, such as the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1884, where Belgium did not formally act even though Leopold II had interests in the region. Even after the Congo Free State was annexed by Belgium, anti-colonial sentiment still existed within the country. Because of this, supporters of colonial policy, including those linked to Leopold II's earlier lobbying networks, worked to promote the benefits of empire. To gain public support and build a colonial culture in Belgium, visual media like photography and later cinema were used as propaganda tools. These media were intended to present colonial rule in a positive light and increase public acceptance of Belgium's overseas empire.
Cinema According to Ramos, Belgian colonial cinema was shaped by three "three principles" that were commonly used to support colonialism. The first was that having a presence in Africa was important for protecting national economic and military interests. The second was the belief that Europeans had a moral duty to bring "civilisation" to Africa, which was presented as a way to improve living conditions and end practices such as slavery. The third was "proselytise, i.e., convert the populations to Christianity", mainly through Catholic missions to oppose "paganism, superstition, and the progress of Islam".
Because of these ideas, the Belgian state, the Catholic Church, and large companies operating in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi funded films that promoted colonialism to audiences in Belgium and presented the colonies in a positive way to an international audience. In 1909, around 1,000 metres of film were brought to Belgium and shown at a meeting of the Cercle africain de Bruxelles. These films, which were presented as the first moving images of the Belgian Congo, mainly focused on transport systems (such as Départ de Léopoldville à Anvers), local customs and societies (such as Les industries indigènes), and natural resources, especially mining in the Katanga region (such as Le chemin de fer de la Rhodésie).
During the early years of the Belgian Congo, many of these films were produced by foreign companies, including the Anglo-African company African World, and were made without official support from the Belgian state. This was partly because film production was expensive and because most people in Belgium were not very interested in colonial affairs. For these reasons, colonial cinema remained a small and irregular activity at first. This began to change after 1919, as during the First World War and in the years that followed, European audiences became more interested in newsreels and documentary films, especially those showing distant countries and wartime events. After the war, this interest continued, and Africa was often seen as a source of "exotic" and visually appealing content. To meet this demand and present Belgian colonial rule in a positive way, the first official film mission led by photographer Ernest Gourdinne was sent to the colonies in the final years of the war. This mission produced about 12,000 metres of film, which were later edited into 20 short documentaries released in 1919. These films were shown widely in Belgium, with more than 1,000 public screenings.
It was only in 1925 that Belgian colonial cinema began to take a clearer model, after a second filming mission was sent to Africa. In that same year, businessman William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, financed a film about his plantations in Kwilu. This type of public-private collaboration helped shape the main direction of Belgian colonial cinema between 1908 and 1939. Films made during this time usually had two main goals: to give information about life in the colonies and to support colonial rule. These films also influenced later filmmakers working in the Belgian Congo. Ernest Genval (1884–1945) is linked to the early phase of this tradition, while André Cauvin (1907–2004) and Gérard De Boe (1904–1960) represent a later phase, mainly active between 1939 and 1960. According to Glenn Reynolds, these three filmmakers are often seen as the main figures of Belgian colonial cinema.
In the 1930s, Genval became an informal leading filmmaker in the Belgian Congo, producing around 60 films. Like William Hesketh Lever, he first worked on advertising films that promoted colonial economic activities and encouraged investment in the colony. He later shifted to documentary filmmaking while continuing to use similar themes in films like De Boma à Tshela (1926), Fonctionnement d'une bourse de travail (1926), and Or (1938). In these works, Genval presented the development of infrastructure and economic activity in the Congo as beneficial for European and black populations. His films often focused on transport systems such as railways linking agricultural estates between Boma and Tshela, where cocoa and palm oil production was shown; labor systems such as the Kasai labor exchange, where Congolese workers sought employment; and mining activities, including gold extraction along the Aruwimi River.