Space is the Place

Avant-garde jazz keyboardist, composer, and bandleader Sun Ra brought his iconoclastic Afrofuturist vision—and his chaotically swinging ensemble, the Arkestra—to the big screen with this 1974 feature, co-written by Ra based on lectures he’d delivered at the University of California, Berkeley. Touching down in Oakland after years in space, the regal Ra and his cohorts revisit the leader’s early days as a strip-club pianist, meets with inner-city youth, and sets out to rescue the Black population from earthly exploitation.