NATIONAL COMPETITION

Soundtrack to a Coup d'État

Johan Grimonprez

In 1960, 16 newly independent African countries were admitted to the United Nations, a political landslide that challenges the former colonial powers. The Cold War reaches its climax when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev supports the union of African countries and denounces the UN's complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba in Congo. He demands immediate decolonisation on a global scale. Congo thus becomes the centrepiece of this war between two power blocs and the struggle for control of the United Nations. To safeguard the resources of the former Belgian Congo, King Baudouin finds an ally in the Eisenhower administration, which fears losing access to one of the world's largest uranium reserves, a mineral crucial for making atomic bombs. The US State Department springs into action: jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong is dispatched to win the hearts and minds of Africa. Unwittingly, Armstrong thereby diverts attention from the first post-colonial coup in Africa, which will lead to the assassination of Congo's first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba.

The Black ‘ambassadors’ of jazz are thus – without knowing it themselves – at the heart of the CIA's secret operations. Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Melba Liston are faced with a painful dilemma: how to represent a country where segregation is still law?

The film shows how closely jazz and decolonisation are linked in this forgotten episode of the Cold War. This tragic and complex story is told by women's rights activist and Central African politician Andrée Blouin, Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O'Brien, Belgian-Congolese writer Jean Bofane and Nikita Khrushchev himself.

With the editor Rik Chaubet
 

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Music

Sun. 16 NOV. / 18:00
CINEMATEK LEDOUX
OV EN-FR-RU / st FR
149'

2024 / BE, fr

Prod : Onomatopée Film, Warboys

EN