Belgian filmmaker/artist Johan Grimonprez caused an international stir with his first feature dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) after its premiere at Documenta X. An exploration into media's mutating collusion with mass perception, this dizzying chronicle of airplane hijacking eerily foreshadowed the events of 9/11.

His recent feature Double Take (2009) questions how our view of reality is held hostage by mass media, advertising, and Hollywood. Written by award-winning British novelist Tom McCarthy, the film targets the global rise of fear-as-commodity in a tale of odd couples and hilarious double deals. Grimonprez's work is an inspired media archaeology that can be envisioned as both the joyful affirmation of a global disengagement, as well as the catalyst of effervescent criticism.

Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale to Sundance, his critically acclaimed films have garnered Best Director Awards and were acquired by NBC UNIVERSAL, Arte, and Channel 4. In addition, his works are part of the permanent collections of the Tate Modern and the Centre Georges Pompidou, as well as having been exhibited worldwide. In 2011 Hatje/Cantz published a reader on his work called It’s A Poor Sort Of Memory That Only Works Backwards.

After acclaimed essays such as dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) and Double Take (2009), Johan Grimonprez now unravels the decolonization of the Congo. He succinctly sets out the international context of the Cold War, the American civil rights movement and the Non-Aligned Movement in the UN, before zooming in on the murder of Congo’s first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961 and the direct involvement of the Belgian and US governments, which feared losing their grip on Congolese uranium.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat 2024 (new release)
Grimonprez spices this pressure cooker of colonialism, capitalism and racism with jazz. “Jazz ambassador” Louis Armstrong was sent to Congo by the US as a smokescreen for overthrowing Lumumba’s government, while musicians such as Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crashed the UN Security Council to protest Lumumba’s murder.

Meanwhile Armstrong and other jazz ambassadors face a painful dilemma: How to represent a country where racial segregation is still the law of the land? Music propels this jazzily edited documentary, which won the Special Jury Award at Sundance, into the present in which Congo still suffers from the neo-colonial battle over resources.

Artist Code: 101