'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' This real-life Cold War spy thriller and award-winning documentary maps a musical collision between African decolonization, struggles for Black Civil Rights, threats of communism, rumours of coups and the power of cultural diplomacy.In 1960, just months after Patrice Lumumba became president of newly-independent Congo, the CIA, fearing communist influence, helped orchestrate a coup. With Lumumba dead, jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone were dispatched to Africa as cultural ambassadors for American freedom – all while Jim Crow segregation persisted back home. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hammered his shoe on the table at the United Nations to demand decolonization, and Black musicians stormed the chamber to protest the scandal. Constructed from archival footage with an immersive staccato soundtrack, the film offers a syncopated rhythm of geopolitics and lost progress that resonates with an urgency for our times.Speakers:Dr Megan Hunt, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh.Dr Elizabeth Banks, CSMCH-IASH Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow [Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History], University of Edinburgh.Dr Deborah Cohn, historian of cultural diplomacy in Cold War Latin America, Indiana University. Tags History May 26 2026 18.30 - 21.00 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' This screening is in collaboration with Filmhouse and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. It will have a short introduction and be followed by a Q&A with historians of Cold War and cultural diplomacy. Filmhouse Edinburgh, 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH3 9BZ Find the venue Tickets
'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' This real-life Cold War spy thriller and award-winning documentary maps a musical collision between African decolonization, struggles for Black Civil Rights, threats of communism, rumours of coups and the power of cultural diplomacy.In 1960, just months after Patrice Lumumba became president of newly-independent Congo, the CIA, fearing communist influence, helped orchestrate a coup. With Lumumba dead, jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone were dispatched to Africa as cultural ambassadors for American freedom – all while Jim Crow segregation persisted back home. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hammered his shoe on the table at the United Nations to demand decolonization, and Black musicians stormed the chamber to protest the scandal. Constructed from archival footage with an immersive staccato soundtrack, the film offers a syncopated rhythm of geopolitics and lost progress that resonates with an urgency for our times.Speakers:Dr Megan Hunt, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh.Dr Elizabeth Banks, CSMCH-IASH Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow [Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History], University of Edinburgh.Dr Deborah Cohn, historian of cultural diplomacy in Cold War Latin America, Indiana University. Tags History May 26 2026 18.30 - 21.00 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' This screening is in collaboration with Filmhouse and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. It will have a short introduction and be followed by a Q&A with historians of Cold War and cultural diplomacy. Filmhouse Edinburgh, 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH3 9BZ Find the venue Tickets
May 26 2026 18.30 - 21.00 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' This screening is in collaboration with Filmhouse and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. It will have a short introduction and be followed by a Q&A with historians of Cold War and cultural diplomacy.
