Film Screening & Q&A: "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat"

"Maybe the Sky Is Really Green, and We’re Just Colorblind."

Join the Film Studies Program for a film screening of Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat., followed by a Q&A with director Johan Grimonprez.

Prior to the screening, Grimonprez will deliver a talk and workshop at 4 p.m. 

Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

It is 1960, six months after the admission of sixteen newly independent African countries to the UN, a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote from the colonial powers to the Global South. As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe in indignation at the UN’s complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba, the U.S. State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup.

Featuring excerpts from “My Country, Africa” by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), “Congo Inc.” by In Koli Jean Bofane, “To Katanga and Back” by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated by Patrick Cruise O’Brien), and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat was Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature and premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Cinematic Innovation Award and further garnered the Persistence of Vision Award at SFFilm and the Audience Award at Thessaloniki Film Festival. Included as part of the “25 greatest docs of the 21st Century” by Documentary Magazine, and lauded as one of the “31 best doc of all time” by Harper’s Bazaar.

Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York).