Director Johan Grimonprez delves into Belgium's past to investigate the plot against Congolese independence.
Louis Armstrong arrived in the Congolese capital, Leopoldville , on October 28, 1960, armed with his trumpet and wiping sweat from his brow. His visit was part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Africa, an arrangement Armstrong felt ambivalent about. Still, the Congolese people gave Satchmo, as the American jazz trumpeter was known, a near royal welcome. Drummers and dancers carried him to his performance venue on a red chair, fashioned like a throne. Civilians cheered him on.
This was a momentous occasion, a storied event for the newly independent republic of the Congo. Four months before Armstrong came to play jazz, the country had freed itself from the colonial grip of Belgium to become one of the more than dozen postcolonial African nations formed in 1960. But the region was still plagued with problems, most of them stemming from the hawkish American and Belgian interest in their natural resources. Unbeknownst to Armstrong, his visit was a CIA cover.
Grimonprez opens his film with a melange of audiovisual clips — excerpts of the jazz hour program on Voice of America; scenes of Khrushchev pounding his fists at a UN General Assembly meeting; and drummer Roach thrashing at his kit — that capture the frenetic energy of the 60s and the increasing popularity of jazz in the U.S. and around the world. This pseudo-prologue closes with a question, posed by a television anchor, about how 1960 will be remembered.
The formation of an independent Congo coincided with radical change in the United Nations, which was formed in 1945 on the premise of maintaining international peace. With the addition of more autonomous nations across Africa and Asia, the key players found themselves in a challenging position: maintain power or commit to their professed democratic ideas? Grimonprez dedicates a substantial chunk ofon the hypocrisy of countries like the U.S., Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.
The film asserts that Belgian and American interest in the Congo had more to do with the trillions of untapped mineral resources in the country. The filmmaker and his team have crafted a film that, at its core, empowers people to pay attention. It is impossible not to connect the history of the Congolese people to the present-day failures:feels less realized is in its synthesis of the present-day impact of imperialism.
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