Robert Mugge filmed jazz great Sun Ra on location in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. between 1978 and 1980. The resulting 60-minute film includes multiple public and private performances, poetry readings, a band rehearsal, interviews, and extensive improvisations. Transferred to HD...
Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra return to Earth after several years in space. Ra proclaims himself "the alter-destiny", meets with inner-city youths and battles with the devil himself to save the black race.
The film is set to bring forward once again the well-worn images of the summit talks between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva. It is a reproduction of the days during the summit. On the one hand, pictures are gathered from the perspective as an onlooker in Geneva, on the other hand, the old...
Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades,...
Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a stunningly variegated and...
Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and company in concert in Paris, 1984. Documents performances and rehearsals in Paris, France, 1984. It includes the compositions "Love in Outer Space," "Nuclear War," and "1984" by Sun Ra and the standards "Tea for Two" and "Blue Lou," as well as interviews with Sun Ra and...
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore: Film, Stories & Images from the Mississippi Records and Alan Lomax Archive
52013HD
A film, music and aural presentation by Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records, Portland, USA. Featuring archival film, images & stories spanning 1890 to the present day, illustrating Eric's own special history of underground music movements and bonafide individuals. The live footage performances...
A biographical, musical, illuminating journey into the work and vision of Sun Ra, exploring his jazz roots, endless innovations, and ceaseless artistic and social quests.
"Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight" covers renowned American artist Betye Saar’s large-scale work “Drifting Toward Twilight”— commissioned by The Huntington Library, Art Museum, & Botanical Gardens — a site-specific installation that features a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe and...
Director Jenn Nkiru authors a personal and powerful exploration of blackness through piecing together dreamlike portraits with stunning archival footage that includes Afrofuturism pioneer Sun Ra and revolutionary organization the Black Panther Party.
This video captures innovative jazz composer, bandleader and pianist/synthesizer player Sun Ra's two live concert performances in East Berlin in 1986. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth but rather Saturn, the eccentric Sun Ra developed a complicated persona embracing cosmic...
Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun...
In the Arctic, ice is both all around and constantly disappearing. “Utuqaq” explores climate change from the perspective of this beautiful and vital element, as four researchers embark on an expedition to drill ice cores in subzero temperatures.
