Soundtrack to a Coup d’État – Oscar® Nominated!

“In the hands of Johan Grimonprez, archival footage carries a 200-volt charge. That dusty patina and musty aroma that envelops most period documentaries? Not a whiff in Grimonprez’s work, which crackles, buzzes and stings like a live wire hitched to the pulse of history.” – Michael Fox, KQED Arts

Join us for a Q&A with director Johan Grimonprez, moderated by California Newsreel Acquisitions Director Cornelius Moore, following the January 5th, 6 PM screening!

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.

Nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film