History

In 1960, 16 newly independent African countries, including Congo, became part of the United Nations. In 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of Congo, was assassinated. In the intervening six months, jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie traveled to Congo to perform, not realizing that they were acting as a smokescreen for the coup d'etat in which Lumumba would be killed, and in which the Belgian and U.S. governments may have been complicit.

"Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat," a documentary from Belgian artist and director Johan Grimonprez, tells that story, and it has been nominated for an Oscar. Robert Daniels wrote a review of the movie when it was released last year. "It’s difficult to watch Grimonprez’s intuitive telling of history without feeling the sinister truth of world history: the major powers of the world only see countries like the Congo as an exploitable resource, not as a sovereign state," he says.

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