The Mid-Atlantic Region of the Black Alliance for Peace presents a new external popular education offering; “Critical Film Series”. This ongoing event gives community members the opportunity to engage with members of BAP through the critical study of cinema. To connect Black History Month to African Liberation, we will be screening Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to Coup’d’etat at the MICA in the Mosher Building to reflect on how the U.S. has played a key role in the destruction of African Liberation. We will use this screening to study the historic use of black music in American propaganda as well as learn more about the devastating assassination of Patrice Lumumba and how it still affects the ongoing exploitation of the region.
About the film -
“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.” - Kino Lober
