Part of Music City Mondays. Showtimes for Fri-Sun, Dec 6-8 will be posted on Mon, Dec 2
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.
“A bravura cinematic essay that intertwines jazz, history, and the taste of a spy thriller…. What Grimonprez creates here is a mind-blowingly rich tapestry of research, music, and the jazziest history lesson imaginable.” —Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar “Where the sprawling, knotty, and thoroughly captivating SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ÉTAT sheds new light is in its form, exploring a global conspiracy playing out often right in view.” —John Fink, The Film Stage “The secret to the film’s accessibility is the same thing its subjects used to wreak global havoc: Jazz as a smokescreen to cover up atrocities…. A healthy primer on the skeptical eye we should take towards world powers, and how even the art that’s meant to free us can be used against us.” —C. Worthington, Consequence
