"But did he have rhythm?" Madman Films has revealed the first look trailer for an acclaimed documentary film titled Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, made by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez. This film is an entrancing look back at a major moment in global politics during the Cold War, intertwining music history & pop culture with these events. Jazz & decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the Un Security Council in protest against the murder of Patrice Lumumba. After Lumumba was murdered in 1961, the US State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup in the country. The doc features excerpts from My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane, To Katanga & Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated...
- 5/5/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
“The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo,” Langston Hughes wrote in his poem “Negro.” “They lynch me now in Texas.” The year was 1922, and racial segregation was the norm in the United States. Anti-Black racism in the South was such a millstone that the U.S. Senate failed to pass an NAACP-sponsored anti-lynching bill in January of that year, a list of simple protections that was prevented from coming to a vote due to filibusters.
Hughes’s poem is one piece of ephemera that comprises the massive tapestry that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary is primarily focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its struggle for independence from Belgian colonialism, during which time our government was using Black jazz musicians to, in its diplomatic tango with the Soviet Union, paint a portrait of American liberalism as benevolent.
The documentary focuses on...
Hughes’s poem is one piece of ephemera that comprises the massive tapestry that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary is primarily focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its struggle for independence from Belgian colonialism, during which time our government was using Black jazz musicians to, in its diplomatic tango with the Soviet Union, paint a portrait of American liberalism as benevolent.
The documentary focuses on...
- 1/23/2024
- by Greg Nussen
- Slant Magazine
Premiering out of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, the impressionistic essay film “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” refracts the plot against Patrice Lumumba through a kaleidoscopic lens. Cutting between historical footage of the Un General Assembly and home movies shot in liberation-era Congo, weaving in a diverse set of perspectives, and setting the pace to a non-stop rhythm of bebop, rumba and classic jazz, director Johan Grimonprez evokes the euphoria of post-colonial possibility and the heartbreak of the dashed hopes and violent reprisals that would ensue.
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
- 1/17/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
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