SUN RA: DO THE IMPOSSIBLE

Christine Turner | USA 2025 | 84’ | OV

Poet, egyptologist, cosmologist, historian, activist, bandleader, musician… Jazz pioneer Sun Ra was all of these. In this illuminating biography, Christine Turner takes us on a complex journey through the life of a complex man who either was born in Birmingham, Alabama, sent from Saturn, or both.

With his band, the Arkestra, he extended the boundaries of free-form Jazz, put his own mark on the standards, and pursued forays into electronic music, yet could be just as inspired to riff on “Over the Rainbow” (the Hollyood musical “The Wizard of Oz”’s most famous song). His musical mission was also rooted as an agent toward advancing Afrofuturism, mixing interstellar metaphors (“space is the place”) and his own scientific explanations (“transmolecularization”) with the state of Black life in America.

Turner gracefully balances recollections from the Arkestra’s devout, still-in-awe band members and dancers, comments from big-fan historians, scholars and other musicians, and the musings of Sun Ra himself with unforgettable performance footage, scenes from a self-produced film, and , and beautiful psychedelic animated sequences to paint a portrait — informative, enriching, and at times mind-blowing — of a man who was as much a visionary as a he was a musician.