Sun Ra Marathon will feature a 50th anniversary screening of the classic Sun Ra film Space is The Place, performances and screenings of Sun Ra related projects by Angels & Demons (Darius Jones / Amirtha Kidambi) and Kamau Patton (premiering his new piece: Sekhet Hetepu), plus special screenings of archival films and videos from the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago—including Phill Niblock’s experimental film of the Arkestra The Magic Sun, rarely seen archival interview and performance footage, music videos created by Sun Ra and the Arkestra in collaboration with Bill Sebastian and his “visual music instrument” (the OVC), a rare audio recording of one of Sun Ra’s UC Berkeley lectures, and more!

Roulette would like to thank Experimental Sound Studio, Kamau Patton, Amirtha Kidambi, Darius Jones, Irwin Chusid, Jim Newman, the Criterion Collection, and Janus Films for their contributions to this special event, proceeds of which will go to benefit music, movement, and media at Roulette.

Space is The Place – John Coney, 1974 — Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social commentary, goofy pseudo-blaxploitation stylistics, and thrilling concert performance, in which the pharaonic Ra and his Arkestra lead an intergalactic movement to resettle the Black race on their utopian space colony.

Longtime collaborators Amirtha Kidambi (voice) and Darius Jones (alto sax) join sonic and compositional forces to materialize “Angels and Demons,” musical adaptations of cosmological writings by iconic composer and bandleader Sun Ra. The duo formed to honor the intellectual, literary, and spiritual contribution of Sun Ra as a philosopher and teacher. Dancing between Ra’s prophetic poetic verse, abstract phonemes, and syllables, sound, noise, tone, melody and rhythmic interplay, Jones and Kidambi use their unique compositional and improvisatory voices to amplify Ra’s poetry to contemporary audiences.