Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (2024)
Browning Cinema
Event Dates
Thursday, February 13, 2025 - 6:30 PM
Friday, February 14, 2025 - 6:30 PM
Saturday, February 15, 2025 - 3:00 PM
Saturday, February 15, 2025 - 6:30 PM
New at the Browning
Directed by Johan Grimonprez
With Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie
Not Rated, 150 minutes, DCP
In English and French, Dutch, and Russian with English subtitles
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'Etatinterrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today's geopolitical climate.
Co-presented by the John and Margaret Brogan Endowment for Excellence in Documentary Film, Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience.