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June 27, 2025
We're paying tribute to Black Music Month with our June movie. We'll be watching Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, a 2024 documentary from the Belgian director Johan Grimonprez. The film attempts to retell the complex, sordid story of U.S. government involvement in the overthrow of the democratic government of Patrice Lumumba in the newly independent African nation of Congo (including the involvement of Black-American musicians as unwitting accomplices).
It's the turn of the 1960s. Belgium has been forced to grant Congo its political independence, but the Belgian rulers don't want to lose control of the great mineral wealth there. The Belgians turned to the Eisenhower administration here in the U.S., which was in the midst of the Cold War with the USSR. Congo had the richest uranium deposits in the world, and the American imperialists were unwilling to "lose" all that material for nuclear weapons to the Russians. The U.S. government was already promoting international tours with leading Black-American musicians like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and John Coltrane to "win hearts and minds" across the Third World; now, in post-colonial Africa, these tours would give the CIA a tremendous opportunity to smuggle spies and assassins into countries like Congo that Washington feared that was losing control of...
Please try to be on time for this film, as it's 2 1/2 hours long and we won't stall much before starting it. Discussion will follow the movie.
As always, this event is free and open to the public. The Black Cat House welcomes all ages, and is a drug and alcohol-free venue. To help keep everyone safe and healthy, we ask that all guests wear face masks in our space. We are wheelchair accessible.