Two Screenings Added, December 20 - 21:

Sundance award winner Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell a timely story that still resonates in today’s geopolitical climate.

Capturing a moment in 1960 when independence movements in the Global South ignited a political earthquake, this documentary is a marvel of montage. It shows the U.S. State Department sending jazz musicians to the Congo to deflect attention away from the CIA-backed coup of Patrice Lumumba, Nikita Krushchev banging his shoe, and musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crashing the U.N. Security Council. Richly supplemented with government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, and speeches from Lumumba himself, the whole thing plays like a historical thriller. And with a soundtrack featuring Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Miriam Makeba, Charles Mingus, and many others, it trumpets, sings, and drums its political moment into being, leaving you feeling its emotions — and its relevance — to your core.

(Belgium, France, Netherlands / 2024 / Directed by Johan Grimonprez)
Unrated / 2 hr 30 min