Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat Movie Trailer HD - Plot synopsis: 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 the Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez explores a moment when jazz, colonialism, and espionage collided, constructing a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. The result is a revelatory documentary 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. Sundance award winner Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00One of America's most popular emissaries arrives in the troubled Congo on a State Department's
00:07goodwill mission.
00:08Louis' solid swinging outraged Radio Moscow, which blasted Armstrong's visit as a diversionary
00:13tactic.
00:14The people of the Congo are in tight to build up their country in peace and freedom.
00:19Hold me close and hold me fast.
00:29We were to go to Elizabethdale to attend a concert given by Louis Armstrong.
00:35How much money do the Central Intelligence Agency has poured into the Congo?
00:39I don't know.
00:40Are you prepared to say?
00:41I certainly, of course, don't know.
00:42I wonder if it's quite honest to represent our policy as completely angelic.
00:49And seated out on the terrace was a man I recognized.
00:52He said, well, you have to assassinate Lumumba.
00:56He used those words?
00:58Yes.
01:00But who ordered him?
01:02He said President Eisenhower.
01:04In the UN, when Khrushchev took off his shoe and was beating that shoe, and the interpreter
01:10said, I'll bury you, talking about America, Khrushchev was saying, I love you.
01:18But it was the interpreter who hated America.
01:23Did he have rhythm?
01:32Rhythm is my business.
02:03It's my business.
02:04It's my business.
02:05It's my business.