Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

PAGLEJ! a series of movies about music

Thursday, November 20, at 19:00
Filmsko gledališče Idrija; admission free

Photo: Terence Spencer Popperfoto

Director and screenplay: Johan Grimonprez. Featuring: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane and others. Production: Onomatopee Films. Warboys Films, Zap-O-Matik and others, Belgium, Netherlands, France, 2024. Duration: 150 min.

The film tells a very intriguing story about how jazz musicians – without realizing it – helped to conceal the political and economic interests of capitalist countries, especially Belgium and the USA. In the 1960s, the latter countries wanted to continue to control uranium extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other resources in Africa. Congo, along with many other African countries, had gained independence, but its leaders were still fighting the Belgian invaders for complete decolonization. American policy sought to distract the attention of the world public from the events in Congo, where the government led by the democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba wanted to take control of the uranium mines. At the same time, it wanted to hide the fact that the CIA supported a series of coups in Africa, including in Congo. To this end, the CIA recruited jazz stars such as Louis Armstrong, Max Roach and Nina Simone and sent them on a tour of Africa as “musical ambassadors”. When Lumumba is assassinated in 1961, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln storm a United Nations Security Council meeting to protest US involvement in Lumumba’s assassination. Using archival footage and the testimonies of musicians and politicians, the film cleverly weaves together jazz, the Cold War and the struggle for decolonization.

The movie series is prepared in co-production with Idrija City Library.