Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat / Johan Grimonprez / Belgium, Netherlands / 150’ / 2024

Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.
It is 1961, six months after the admission of sixteen newly independent African countries to the UN, a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote from the colonial powers to the Global South. As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe in indignation at the UN’s complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba, the glineUS State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Featuring excerpts from My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane, To Katanga and Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated by Patrick Cruise O’Brien), and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev.

Written And Directed By Johan Grimonprez
Edited By Rik Chaubet
Sound Designer Ranko Pauković
Supervising Re-Recording Mixer Alek “Bunic” Goosse
Graphics And Title Design Hans Lettany
Color Grading Blaise Jadoul
Key Archival Researchers Judy Aley, Rémonde Panis, Pauline Burgaud & Alexander Markov
Archival Producer Sara Skrodzka
Produced By Daan Milius & Rémi Grellety
Co-Producers Katja Draaijer & Frank Hoeve

Johan Grimonprez
Who owns our imagination in a world of existential vertigo where truth has become a shipwrecked refugee? Is it the storyteller who can contain contradictions, who can slip between the languages we have been given to become a time-traveler of the imagination? Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of theory and practice, between art and cinema, going beyond the dualisms of documentary and fiction, other and self, mind and brain to weave new pathways in how we perceive our realities. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work depicts intimate stories that brush up against the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our collective imagination, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of realities. Our histories and memories are not only a means to reimagine our contested past, but also tools to negotiate our shared presents. In Wonderland, the Queen rephrases it to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Grimonprez’s feature films include dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997, in collaboration with novelist Don DeLillo, selected by the Guardian as one of the “30 great works in the history of video art”), Double Take (2009, in collaboration with writer Tom McCarthy) and Shadow World (2016, in combination with investigative journalist Andrew Feinstein) premiered at the Tribeca Festival and went on to win the Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Traveling the festival circuit from the Berlinale, Sundance to Tribeca, Grimonprez’s films have garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. They have been acquired by PBS, NBC Universal, ARTE, and BBC/FILM 4. Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London.
Grimonprez is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York) and The Kamel Mennour Galerie (Paris) and he’s published by Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart.