Join us for a free outdoor screening of Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat in partnership with the Snug Harbor and Universal Temple of the Arts. Directed by Johan Grimonprez and released in 2024, the film was the 2025 Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature. Please note: In case of rain, the event will be moved indoors to Community Hall Building P Lobby.

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 acton, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to defect 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.
About Johan Grimonprez

About our Summer Series

During this annual series, AFF presents free programs throughout NYC, in public venues and city parks, including screenings of African cinema and family-friendly events such as the annual Family Day Celebration on Governors Island. Learn More