Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond Johnson
Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social commentary, goofy pseudo-blaxploitation stylistics, and thrilling concert performance, in which the pharaonic Ra and his Arkestra lead an intergalactic movement to resettle the Black race on their utopian space colony.
Directed by Robert Mugge • 1980 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, June Tyson, Danny Thompson
Years ahead of his time, composer, keyboardist, bandleader, poet, and philosopher Sun Ra coupled images of outer space with those of ancient Egypt, acoustic instruments with electronic ones, and modern Am...
Directed by Ron Mann • 1981 • Canada
The first feature documentary by counterculture chronicler Ron Mann is an eloquent tribute to a group of highly celebrated artists who helped forge the once-controversial free jazz movement of the 1960s. Bringing together interviews with and performances by l...
Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1985 • United States
Starring Ornette Coleman
This freewheeling documentary captures Ornette Coleman’s evolution over three decades. Documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music-video-style segments ever made chronicle his boyhood in segregated T...
