By JOÃO LANARI BO*
the movie of Johan Grimonprez It is a complete rejection of two well-known linearities, that of history and that of documentary language.
Mark Twain is known, in addition to the delicious books he wrote, for having been a persistent, ironic and sharp phrase-maker. He once said: “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. On the other side of the ocean, the Belgian filmmaker and curator Johan Grimonprez took this assertion literally and produced the voracious Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, a musical-libertarian ode about decolonization, the Cold War, Congo, Patrice Lumumba and, above all, jazz inferences.
It is a complete rejection of two well-known linearities, that of history and that of documentary language. The result, which skeptics and alphabet vassals will contest, is a highly informative and exceedingly enjoyable film – built on discontinuities that are grouped and dispersed in the syncopated rhythm of Max Roach's drums.
One way to enjoy these 150 minutes of sounds and images, a plural source in a state of permanent innovation, is to imagine the author (or authors: Grimonprez and collaborators) as endowed with a kind of digital subjectivity, which sees history as a space of dispersion and rejects principles of causality, analogy and homogeneity.
By interspersing disparate elements and characters with the staccato rhythm of jazz as a guide and structure, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat privileges discontinuity as a fundamental axis of analysis, dismantling essentialist visions and places of truth (and the powers invested in them) that populate the discourses of knowledge. This concept, formulated by the philosopher Michel Foucault, finds an echo in the filmmaker's statement about his authorial purpose – an attempt to make sense of the wreckage caused by history.
So, what is it all about? As a Belgian, Johan Grimonprez is familiar with his country’s disastrous colonialist incursion into Africa, Congo – a quick look at the internet oracle reveals: “Leopold II was king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909 and is especially remembered for the colonization of the Belgian Congo, which became his private property. During this period, Belgium cut off hands and arms and killed more than 10 million people.”
Cut to Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie. Armstrong was appointed cultural ambassador or something to travel around Africa. Dizzie Gillespie, a sardonic, mocking man, ran for president of the United States in 1964.
Cut to Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, Dwight Eisenhower, Allan Dulles, Nehru, Nasser, Andrée Blouin: the Soviet leader rails against the colonial powers at the UN, taking off his shoes and banging on the table. Fidel Castro, perhaps at his best in the media, is thrown out of the Manhattan hotel where he had stayed with the Cuban delegation and invited by Malcolm X – who was a brilliantly intelligent man – to move into the Hotel Theresa, in Harlem, the epicenter of black America. At that time, Malcolm X even proposed UN intervention in his own country, the United States, in the face of human rights violations against black people: “If they do this all over the world, why not here?”
Colonialism is brutality, as we know: but the Belgians outdid themselves, if it is possible to speak of overcoming a situation like this. History advanced, dispersed, and at the end of the 1950s reached a paroxysm that mixed uranium, post-World War II decolonization, global polarization, the CIA and assassinations of inconvenient leaders.
Patrice Lumumba, Congolese Prime Minister elected in 1960 – but who held office for only 12 weeks – inaugurated a leadership that displeased the Belgian colonialists, always interested in dividing and instigating ethnic rivalries. If there is uranium in sight, especially in the province of Katanga – from there, tons of atomic bombs were sent out to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki – North American power entered the scene to “help” the decadent European outpost.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat It alternates between other images from home videos, newsreels, academic texts and, in particular, speeches by Patrice Lumumba, some of which were considered lost until recently. A self-taught intellectual and avid reader, he entered politics and quickly became famous – he was elected at the age of 34 and assassinated at 35. Relegated to house arrest after three months in office, he tried to escape but was captured in December 1960. He was transferred to Katanga, where he was tortured and killed by mercenaries and rebel troops. His body, and that of his collaborators, were never found.
On a cold February morning in 1961, the UN Security Council met to discuss the crisis in the Congo. A group of black activists led by singer Abbey Lincoln, drummer Max Roach and writer Maya Angelou invaded the premises to protest the organization's failure to act in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Shouts, insults and punches were the highlight of the scene, the best in a film full of good and powerful scenes.
In 2000, a former Belgian police officer confessed that the bodies of Patrice Lumumba and his aides were dissolved in acid. Almost nothing was left, except a few teeth: one of them was kept as a trophy. In 2022, Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw presented Patrice Lumumba’s family with a small blue box containing a tooth — all that was left of the murdered hero — in a televised ceremony.
*João Lanari Bo He is a professor of cinema at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasília (UnB). Author, among other books, of Cinema for Russians, Cinema for Soviets (Time Bazaar) [https://amzn.to/45rHa9F]
Reference
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Soundtrak to Coup d'Etat)
Directed by: Johan Grimonprez.
Belgium, 2024, documentary, 150 minutes.
Cast: Marie Daulne, In Koli Jean Bofane, Patrick Cruise O'Brien, Abbey Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Fidel Castro
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