Space Is The Place

It has come to my attention that Sun Ra's 1974 film "Space Is The Place" is available to view in full via Google Video.

Even if, for some reason, you're not much of an aficionado of Sun Ra and his Arkestra, this has still got to rank as one of the strangest, funniest, most whacked out and beautiful independent American films of the 1970s.

Whether or not you can get your head around Ra's far-out cosmology and his quest to liberate his people, whether or not you enjoy the music, this movie is an absolute hoot on every level.

I remember one of the last times I went to All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands a couple of years ago, 'Space Is The Place' was showing on one of the artist-curated TV channels one morning. About halfway through, my chalet-mates left to go and do something or other, and when they returned they asked me what had happened. "Well," I was duty bound to report, "I think the CIA have just kidnapped Sun Ra, and they've tied him to an armchair and are forcing him to listen to really square oom-pah music so that he won't be able to telepathically relay instructions to his band, who are about to play a big concert that will liberate the consciousness of Black America".

And that ain't the half of it.

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