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 found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by Saar from The Huntington’s grounds. This film renders a portrait of Betye's process at 96 while also reflecting on her life, career, and memories of Pasadena.
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.
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 are culled from rarely seen film shot during Alan Lomax's North American travels between 1978 to 1985 and Mississippi Record's own enormous library of folk blues, gospel, esoteric, international & punk music.
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 television footage is processed.
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 Archie Shepp.
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 from the original 16mm film and lovingly restored for the best possible viewing experience.
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.
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 King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)
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, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.