Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of Congo, in a sequence from the documentary soundtrack to the coup.
During the documentary audio accompaniment of Johan Grimonprez to the coup d’at, the eyes can not take the eyes from the screen for a moment, and the countless intercutes and Juxtapozic fly strongly and fast. As far as it is concerned, they must also have an enthusiastic, attentive ears to keep up with a frenetic pace that nuggets from history during the intoxicated sixties, as Africa has witnessed strong anticolonial movements. One will receive the current of the pictures of images from the blurring speech VK Krishna Menon in the UN General Assembly to the jazz musician Louis Armstrong, who hit Crescendo on his trumpet to the dramatic visuals of the Russian government Nikita Khrushchev.
On its surface, the documentary, which was part of a package of music documentaries “Soundscapes” at the 17th International Documentary and Short Film Festival Keral (IDSFK), about jazz music. There will be a number of legendary jazz musicians, all from Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Art Blakey and Quincy Jones appear. However, some of them were, perhaps without their knowledge used by the American establishment and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the cultural conquest of Africa, to distract attention from the imperialist shenanigans in these parts.
The document thus operates in this sweet or rather acidic place where jazz music, politics, history and colonial conquest are joined. Jazz forms an adhesive between the various sources of a complex story, widespread around the world. The core of this is the western conquest in Congo, valuable for its mineral deposits. With the Belgian adhesion to release Congo, the US comes to the picture. The film using some rare archive shots is recorded by this period, which culminates in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister Congo, with jazz music, and jazz music provides this extremely dramatic touch of the story.
For Indian spectators, the Jawaharlal nezru and Krishna Menon shots that make their serious interventions on the world scene at the heights of an unroacked movement, a refreshing watch at a time when this particular history is disturbed from our memories. With his smart use of archival shots, music performances, official records and material from several books, the soundtrack signals the new instructions in which the documentary filmmaking moves.
Kevin MacDonald’s One to One: John and Yoko, another document in the package, records the lives of musician John Lennon and artist Yoko Ono after the Beatles era. Again, it is more than just about music, but he talks about all the hatred that he faced society after he was marked as one of the reasons for the Beatles breakup on many social and political interventions that the couple had done in this period. It will launch the heat faced by the then US President Richard Nixon, including the threat of deportation, for their political position. One of the highlights is the renewed shots of the Lennon concert in favor of children with mental disabilities, which had been kept in a state of total neglect in the Willowbrook facility.
Michael Ogden becomes Madonna reveals lesser -known aspects of pop icon. The document deals with the stories widespread by the yellow print and focuses on its brave support for the homosexual community at a time when their cause has not yet been accepted in the mainstream. In the documentary he encounters as a woman who has never left her ideals or face to face intense social and political pressure.
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Published – August 26 2025 17:57
