Coups, colonialism and all that jazz: the film that unravels extraordinary cold war truths

Johan Grimonprez’s documentary Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat reveals the curious link between Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected Black African prime minister

Half-way through Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington’s soulful version of In a Sentimental Mood is interrupted. Suddenly, we see and hear Malcolm X giving a speech at New York’s Harlem Square in 1960. It’s like being shaken from a delicious reverie and thrown into the ice bath of reality.

“You’ll never get Mississippi straightened out,” Malcolm X snaps at the Harlem crowds, “until you start realising the connection with the Congo.” The curious connection between Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the second-largest country in Africa is the subject of Johan Grimonprez’s documentary.

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Coups, colonialism and all that jazz: the film that unravels extraordinary cold war truths

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