Gustave Fundi

Gustave Giresse Fundi Mwamba has a degree in Performing Arts from the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where he lives and works. Interested from an early age in a wide range of media, including comics and film, he began his artistic career as an actor and dancer when he joined the Vicanos-Club cultural collective in 2009. In 2011, he took part in the Halle de l'Étoile young filmmakers' workshop in Lubumbashi, where he met Glodie Mubikay, with whom he set up Osimbi Oziki Studios, also known as O2 Studios, in 2012. He is not only the coordinator of the project, but also its director and scriptwriter, and has extended his practice to include new technical and stylistic experiments in video art. O2 studios produces documentaries and fiction in the fantasy, horror, paranormal and science fiction genres. In his work, Gustave Fundi endeavours to show the world Congolese culture, both ancestral and contemporary, by evoking political issues such as the exploitation of natural resources.

Fundi won the Best Director and Best Film award for the short fiction film Ramazani at the Cinétoiles festival in Lubumbashi in 2014. 2016 saw the start of a sustained collaboration between the artist, his collaborator Glodie Mubukai and filmmaker Lucile Desamory, which gave rise to several joint projects including the production of the feature film Suspended Disbelief. In 2018, they took part together in the L'iceberg or "Qu’est-ce que Chris Maker nous fait faire?" project at the École de Recherche Graphique (ERG) in Brussels and took part in a workshop as part of the Afropolitan festival organised by Bozar. In 2020 Télé Réalité was released, a film he co-wrote with Glodie Mubikay and Lucile Desamory, exploring the concept of ethnographic surrealism applied to pagan rituals in Belgium.