Sun Ra Intergalactic Solar Arkestra 1974 Space Is The Place

Released: November 1974 Running time: 85 min. Background During the late1960s and early1970s, Sun Ra and his ensemble made several forays to California. In 1971, Sun Ra taught a course, The Black Man in the Cosmos, at University of California, Over the course of these California visits, Sun Ra came to the attention of Jim Newman, who produced the film Space Is the Place starring Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and based, in part, on Sun Ra s Berkeley Plot Sun Ra, who has been reported lost since his European tour in June 1969, lands on a new planet in outer space with his crew, known as the Arkestra, and decides to settle African Americans on this planet. The medium of transportation he chooses for this resettlement is music. He travels back in time and returns to the Chicago strip club where he used to play piano with the name Sonny Ray in 1943, where he confronts the Overseer (Ray Johnson), a pimpoverlord, and they agree on a game of cards for the fate of the Black race. In pr