First Look: Kaleidoscopic Sundance Doc ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ Dizzies With Burst of Pop and Politics (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Ben Croll Premiering out of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, the impressionistic essay film “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” refracts the plot against Patrice Lumumba through a kaleidoscopic lens.

Cutting between historical footage of the UN General Assembly and home movies shot in liberation-era Congo, weaving in a diverse set of perspectives, and setting the pace to a non-stop rhythm of bebop, rumba and classic jazz, director Johan Grimonprez evokes the euphoria of post-colonial possibility and the heartbreak of the dashed hopes and violent reprisals that would ensue. “At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history.

And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider, global picture.” Grimonprez traced that wider picture by pairing Blouin’s home-movies and personal recollections – together offering an eyewitness account of Lumumba’s brief tenure – alongside a chorus of contemporaneous voices and archival sources, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, U.N.

envoy Conor Cruise O’Brien, and Congolese author In Koli Jean Bofane all stepping into the spotlight at different points. Tying them all together, of course, is the music itself. “I wanted the music to be a kind of protagonist all on its own,” the filmmaker explains. “Music is an actor of this global story.