Jazz pianist, early synthesizer adopter, bandleader, record-label president, interplanetary ambassador: Sun Ra was all of these things and more. Born Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama—and reborn on Saturn as a pioneer of Afro-futurism who returned to Earth with a mission to liberate Black people from their psychic shackles—the musical genius and his ever-evolving “Arkestra” ensemble made some of the boldest, most exciting experimental jazz of the mid-20th century and beyond. Using testimonials from critics and longtime collaborators, filmmaker Christine Turner chronicles how Sun Ra turned his truly out-of-this-world persona into something bigger than an alter ego, and put forth a philosophy that “space is the place” to make people rethink everything they knew about race, class, social norms, and music as a medium to blow minds. It’s a portrait of an artist as a cultural astronaut, boldly going where no one has gone before or since. —David Fear
Christine Turner
Christine Turner is an Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker whose intimate portraits of artists, activists, and everyday people capture the beauty and struggle of life. She recently directed J'Nai Bridges Unamplified (2023)and Peabody nominee and NAACP Image Award-winner Lynching Postcards: ‘Token of a Great Day’ (2021). Other directing credits include the Oscar®-nominated short The Barber of Little Rock(2023), Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business (2020), Paint & Pitchfork (2022), and her acclaimed feature debut, Homegoings (2013). Among her work for television is The 1619 Project (2023), Amend: The Fight for America (2021), and Art in the Twenty-First Century (2018).