Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Directed by Johan Grimonprez
2024Documentary150 minBelgium14A
Jazz and decolonization collide in Johan Grimonprez's electrifying essay film on the Cold War plot behind the 1961 assassination of Congo's Patrice Lumumba.
Synopsis
United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.
The director
Johan Grimonprez
Johan Grimonprez is a Belgian artist and filmmaker known for archival collage works such as dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y and Double Take. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat won a Special Jury Award at Sundance and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
On screens
Already played at 33 cinemas in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Halifax, Victoria, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Kingston, Saskatoon, West Vancouver, Whitehorse, Winnipeg, Powell River and more.
