Film Screening + Director Q&A: “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”

(Johan Grimonprez, Belgium: 2024; In English, French, Arabic, Dutch, Russian; with English Subtitles; 150 mins)

Jazz and decolonization intertwine in this Oscar-nominated documentary—a historical rollercoaster that rewrites a Cold War episode, when musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the UN Security Council to protest the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Sixteen newly independent African countries are admitted to the world stage of the United Nations in 1960, triggering 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 US State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. This story of the undermining of African self-determination is told from the perspective of Central African Republic women’s rights activist and politician Andrée Blouin, Irish diplomat and enfant terrible Conor Cruise O’Brien, Belgian-Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane, and Nikita Khrushchev himself.

On Tuesday, September 15, the Committee for Film Studies and the Program in Media + Modernity will present the Faber Lecture: “Every Day Words Disappear.” Both the screening and the lecture are free and open to the public.