Screening of Johan Grimonprez's Oscar-nominated documentary on Patrice Lumumba and the 1960s Congo, set to a jazz soundtrack, with an interval.
Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is coming to Electric Palace in Hastings on Friday 18 December at 19:30, with a second screening on Sunday 20 December at 11:00. The film was released in 2024 and picked up an Academy Award nomination, and it follows the final months of Patrice Lumumba, the revolutionary Congolese politician.
It's set in the newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960, and Grimonprez describes it as a music-soaked detective story. The film cuts between smoky jazz performances, archive newsreels and declassified memos to show how Cold War politics, colonialism and jazz were all intertwined. One of the more striking threads is how the CIA used unwitting jazz ambassadors like Louis Armstrong as distractions to cover its political meddling in the region. It also gives a voice to Andrée Blouin, the women's rights activist who worked as Lumumba's adviser and speechwriter.
The jazz isn't just a backdrop; it's right there in the title. The soundtrack features Max Roach, Nina Simone, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. And the film doesn't stop in the sixties—it flashes forward to adverts for iPhones and Teslas to tie the DRC's mineral resources to the present day.
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Both screenings are part of the Winter Of Culture season curated by Remi Vibesman. If you're around Hastings that weekend, you've got the choice of the Friday evening slot or the Sunday morning one: Friday 18 December at 19:30 and Sunday 20 December at 11:00, both at Electric Palace.
