Monday February 10 * 7pm * Free / donations * RSVP

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.

“An astonishingly cohesive and compelling narrative… Grimonprez seasons dry diplomatic procedure with polyrhythms to recreate the destabilizing feeling of geopolitics careening to the brink…”
– Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Bomb

“A case study of decolonization, neo-imperialism, cultural exploitation, and political murder…I don’t think I’ve seen a better movie-movie all year.” – J. Hoberman, Film Comment

"Critic’s Pick! Rhythmic and propulsive... uses every instrument cinema affords. The result, in a word, is marvelous." – Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times