Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

A special screening event hosted by the Black Studies Program at Queen’s University, to celebrate Black Histories and Futures Month ’25 (February 9 to 27). Admission is free and everyone is welcome to attend! 

• FREE EVENT RSVP – Guarantee yourself a ticket on Eventbrite. Open seating, first-come-first served.

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.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat succeeds as an intense piece of reclamation and rejuvenation, giving breath to Lumumba’s spirit by sporting the same kind of defiance the political leader espoused. – RogerEbert.com

It’s an entertaining and instructive documentary that presents a huge canvas on which it masterfully explains a complicated historical moment. – Variety