Sun Ra: The Magic Sun Bonus Material 1966 (video)

In 1966, film maker and avant-garde musician, Phill Niblock, created a short film of the Arkestra.  The film was remastered and re-released on DVD a few years ago and included not only the original 17 minute film but 16 minutes of bonus material featuring pictures of Arkestra members and  music, poetry, and a brief monologue recorded by Sun Ra.  I recognize the poetry from the recent Norton spoken word releases.

The information below refers to the film, The Magic Sun and not necessarily the DVD Bonus Material presented below.

Musicians seen but not heard: Sun Ra (p, strings); Walter Miller (tp); Marshall Allen (as, fl, strings); Danny Davis (as, fl, strings); John Gilmore (ts, perc, strings); Pat Patrick (bars, strings); Robert Cummings (bcl, strings); Ronnie Boykins (b, strings); Clifford Jarvis (d); Herby Griffin (d); Jimmy Johnson (d, perc); James Jacson (log drums, perc); Akhbar (prob. perc).

New York City, 1966

This was a 17-minute high-contrast black-and-white film made by Phill Niblock. It was not a performance recording; in order to reate a silhouette effect, Niblock says he filmed the band in extreme close-up shots in an apartment illuminated by a single light bulb. He also filmed the band on the roof of a building and used negatives for most of that footage. Danny Ray Thompson remembered the film as "all shadows, all negatives." The soundtrack was taken from previously released material on Saturn. According to Chris Trent, this was "Celestial Fantasy" (from When Angels Speak of Love) and "The Shadow World" (from The Magic City); "Strange Strings" is mentioned in the credits but not heard.

The film was shown at the Arkestra's Carnegie Hall concerts on April 12 and 13, 1968, and reissued on video in Europe in 1994, as part of a Sun Ra memmorial package offered by Blast First in a special limited edition of 500, BFFP V101.

The personnel (Walter Miller is not known to have worked with Ra between 1967 and 1978; Herby Griffin is otherwise known only from rehearsal photos taken by Val Wilmer at the Sun Studios in 1966 and reproduced in Omniverse Sun Ra by Geerken and Hefele) leads us to believe that the film was shot in 1966. Niblock says 1966 to 1968.

From The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra 2nd ed. 

The Sound of Eye posted the main feature here.

Download the bonus material here (mp4 202mb).