Space is the Place (1974)

John Coney - 1974 - 85min. - USA - English

JAZZ MOVIES I

After landing on a planet in outer cosmos, jazz musician Sun-Ra decides to create a paradise of equality, where all Africans can live in unity. Traveling back to earth, he vows to ferry as many black souls as possible to this new home, and the mode of transportation he chooses: Jazz. 

Space is the Place, as a piece of afrofuturist fiction, brings to the silver screen many of the radical (some might say completely insane) principles present in much of Sun Ra’s musical composition and performance, with the film itself originally being inspired by  a series of lectures given by Sun Ra at UC Berkeley in 1969. The film, shot on 8mm with a shoestring budget, is a unique time capsule of 60s psychedilia, the black power movement, and black separatism.