A remarkable film called Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is up for a possible Oscar for best documentary this year. I've seen none of the other four nominees, but have intentionally avoided seeing one of them, which appears from the advertisements to be a disgusting piece of propaganda in support of war in Ukraine. In contrast, Soundtrack is an exposure of the evil at the core of Western governments, implicating Belgium, the United States, the United Nations, and NATO in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the extended colonization and exploitation of the Congo, the sabotage and destruction of dreams of global disarmament even when proposed by the Soviet Union, and the obliteration of aspirations for a free and independent United States of Africa, not to mention the manipulation and exploitation of top cultural and artistic creators. We see that exploitation in many products of Hollywood today and hear the relief in the words of the President of Mexico at the prospect of being cut off from U.S. culture. In Soundtrack we see Louis Armstrong used as cover for a CIA murder operation, and are told that he threatened to renounce his U.S. citizenship and move to Africa.
The story of the assassination of Lumumba is not new. But here it is presented with the artistic creativity and high "production values" to get it watched, even by people who do not read. And here we can see and hear Lumumba and other individuals -- notably Allen Dulles -- giving form and substance to their names. Imagine if each of the U.S. coups and assassinations and wars in this list were given this sort of treatment. In this case, it took a Belgian filmmaker. Unlike the latest (and so many other) Vietnam series on Apple TV, "Vietnam: The War That Changed America" (did it do nothing to Vietnam?), the focus is not on the suffering of Belgian soldiers -- rather on the destruction of the dreams of the people of the Congo, the outrage of the people of the world, and the cynical evil of the people calling the shots, from Dulles and Eisenhower on down.
In a good review by Robert Daniels, he writes:
"To see the archival footage of Patrice Lumumba, which serves as the backbone to the forceful documentary 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat,' is to witness a daring future that, due to the rot of colonialism, tragically never came to pass. The foil to the film's incisive use of newsreels, excerpts from biographies and political speeches is the kinetic wielding of jazz music.
"On October 28, 1960, for instance, Louis Armstrong jubilantly arrived in the Congolese capital of Leopoldville (renamed Kinshasa in 1966) to perform. He came to a country that has always mystified the Euro-centric imagination as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Africa. Four months earlier, the Republic of the Congo's bid for independence had become a living reality. Three months after Armstrong's performance, with the murder of Lumumba, the dream had already died."
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