Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Johan Grimonprez, Belgium, France, Netherlands, 2024, 150′

A powerful blend of musical documentary and fierce criticism of colonialism, the film talks about the mid-20th century, when the newly formed Democratic Republic of Congo became the central battlefield of capitalist and communist forces. African countries were declaring independence, Third World countries were establishing the Non-Aligned Movement, and the US government was sending its greatest jazz musicians to Africa to divert attention.

“For me, each documentary is also about questioning the language of how you’re going to tell a story specific to that subject matter. There’s the Vertovian approach, but then again, it’s mixed with the Eisenstein movement of dramatizing history. They embody different perspectives, but they also help capture the emotional connectedness.

There’s always the risk of falsification of history, but you can’t avoid including the poetic space because you use words that are embedded with meaning. I hope the film is transparent enough to make it clear that it’s not a falsification. /…/

There are a lot of questions you could ask, like: What is history writing? What is the style of writing history or the way you connect and collect certain facts? I’ve tried to be very cautious since one can get very close to the territory of appropriation. It’s always difficult to navigate through this process and try to remain truthful. This was the reason I chose to include the footnotes, because I knew that I would be grilled. But now, at least, if people want to explore it further, or if they say, ‘I don’t agree with what you said,’ the references are there, so we can open up a dialogue.” – Johan Grimonprez, Documentary Magazine

Johan Grimonprez (born 1962) is a Belgian multimedia artist, filmmaker and curator. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. He is most known for his films Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), Double Take (2009) and Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (2016), based on the book by Andrew Feinstein. Grimonprez’s work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction.

The film will be introduced by the Kino Otok festival team and guests.

The screening is part of a special programme we are preparing in collaboration with Kosovelov dom Sežana as part of the 21st International Film Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema.