As a film critic and researcher, I am fascinated by the tensions and affinities between aesthetics and politics, text and context, as they unfold across the meandering histories of forms and narratives.
Bio
I have worked as a freelance film critic since 2006, when I completed a Master’s degree in Film Studies and Visual Culture, following earlier studies in Dutch and English Literature. My writing on literature, the arts and, above all, cinema—reviews, essays and interviews—has appeared in a range of publications, including Leeswolf, Filmmagie, Cinemagie, Flanders Today, rekto:verso, Streven, Sabzian, Apache, Kortfilm.be/yanco and Talking Shorts. I have also contributed medium-length booklet texts commissioned by Kunstenfestivaldesarts and argos.
From 2017 to 2020, I served as editor-in-chief of the film magazine Filmmagie. In October 2021, I co-founded Fantômas, a journal of film criticism.
As an advocate of cultural reflection in its many forms, I was a board member of Folio, the umbrella organisation for cultural magazines in Flanders, from 2017 to 2022.
Throughout the years, I curated film programmes for Acteur.be, Filmmagie, Breedbeeld, Extra City, M HKA, De Cinema, Electric Shadows (2020-2022, a festival of Asian cinema which I co-founded), and Fantômas.
Academic trajectory
From August 2022, I embarked on a doctoral research project on the history of Belgian documentary cinema at the University of Antwerp (Visual Poetics research group) and the University of Namur (Histoire, sons et images). This research culminated in the edited volume Cinema in Post-War Belgium: Rebuilding Screens and Identities, 1944–1967 (Leuven University Press, 2026), co-edited with Gertjan Willems and Bénédicte Rochet.
Alongside this, the results of my academic research have appeared in journals including the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and Studies on National Movements (see here for full references).
Since 2022, I’ve also been part of CiThe, a network for PhD researchers working on film, theatre, performance, dance, music and circus across Belgian higher education institutions.
Bjorn Gabriels, film critic & researcher 