Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)

Film screening in English with Hungarian subtitles.

Contemporary Hungarian film and (rock) music have been in contact practically since the late 1960s. Sometimes more intensively, sometimes more loosely, but they are essentially inseparable.  Before the screenings, Béla Szilárd Jávorszky will talk briefly about the genesis and pop-historical significance of these works, followed by a discussion with a guest film aesthetics expert on the relevant domestic and international trends.

Directed by Johan Grimonprez, the two-and-a-half-hour documentary focuses on the 1960s, the year Africa became independent and joined the United Nations, when many countries on the continent, formerly colonised by the great powers, became members of the UN. At the same time, the race was on to determine whether Western Europe (and the United States) or the socialist countries, led by the Soviet Union, could impose their own social order on the newly formed countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was considered too sovereign by American and Belgian leaders. A Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat - a soundtrack to both the Cold War and post-colonial Africa, the duplicity of Western European politics and racial discrimination, while selecting some of the best jazz recordings of the era, is one of the most celebrated feature-length documentaries of 2024, winning the Sundance Film Festival's Special Innovation Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2025.