Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat + intro + Q&A

Name: Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat + intro + Q&A
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2026-05-26
Duration: 2 h 30 min
Cast: Patrice Lumumba, Louis Armstrong, Nikita Khrushchev

This screening is in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics, and Archaeology and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. It will have a short introduction and be followed by a Q&A with historians of Cold War and cultural diplomacy. Speakers: Dr Megan Hunt, historian of twentieth century American culture and civil rights, University of Edinburgh. Dr Elizabeth Banks, historian of the Soviet Union and Cold War Africa, University of Edinburgh. Dr Deborah Cohn, historian of cultural diplomacy in Cold War Latin America, Indiana University. This real-life Cold War spy thriller and award-winning documentary maps a musical collision between African decolonization, struggles for Black Civil Rights, threats of communism, rumours of coups and the power of cultural diplomacy. In 1960, just months after Patrice Lumumba became president of newly-independent Congo, the CIA, fearing communist influence, helped orchestrate a coup. With Lumumba dead, jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone were dispatched to Africa as cultural ambassadors for American freedom – all while Jim Crow segregation persisted back home. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hammered his shoe on the table at the United Nations to demand decolonization, and Black musicians stormed the chamber to protest the scandal. Constructed from archival footage with an immersive staccato soundtrack, the film offers a syncopated rhythm of geopolitics and lost progress that resonates with an urgency for our times.DocumentaryPT2H30M12A2026-05-26

Patrice Lumumba

Louis Armstrong

Nikita Khrushchev

Johan Grimonprez

Rémi Grellety

Daan Milius

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat + intro + Q&A"Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat + intro + Q&A"

Showtimes

May 26, 6:30 pm