Brother From Another Planet - directed by Don Letts (2005)
Born in perhaps the most segregated place on Earth – early 20th-century Alabama – Herman Poole Blount rejected his name, his origins and the conventions of the time (or any other, for that matter), re-creating himself as Sun Ra, emissary from Saturn ("planet of discipline") and musical genius. Blending Egyptology and Space Age imagery, he projected a philosophy of radical empowerment for the entire cosmos; keeping a big band on the road for decades through independence and communal living, he became a patriarch of jazz and an avatar of freewheeling space music. Turning from the punk and reggae with which he’s most closely associated to one of the key figures in 20th-century sound, famed DJ/filmmaker Letts presents the Sun Ra story in all its glory, combining powerful footage of Ra and his legendary Arkestra, interviews with band members shot at their famous group house in Philadelphia and testimonies from sax great Archie Shepp, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and other admirers.
-Keith Jones - musicfilmweb
First comprehensive documentary about the ultimate music visionary. Born in Alabama, then the most segregated place on Earth, Sun Ra rejected convention and claimed to be from Saturn, "planet of discipline."
He brought together Egyptology and the imagery of the Space Age to project a philosophy of radical empowerment - for the entire Cosmos. Keeping a big band on the road for decades through independence and communal living, Sun Ra became a patriarch of jazz.
Punk film legend Don Letts presents the Sun Ra story in all its glory, combining powerful footage of Ra and his legendary Arkestra, interviews with band members shot at their famous group house in Philadelphia, and testimony from Archie Shepp, Amiri Baraka, John Sinclair and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.
Video TS file (PAL DVD) 2.13 GB
(Uploaded in Linked 400 MB parts)
or
Originally offered at Call It Anything Blog in the Contributions section. HUGE THANKS to the
original uploader!
Special Thanks as well to an anonymous friend for converting this to DIVX for streaming.
a great 'documentary'!
ReplyDeleteI-)
weird - it is also on youtube
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqZHzpAYVIk BBC Documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet
I-)
Hi I-),
ReplyDeleteI uploaded the files to MegaUpload on Monday and as is often the case, there were several downloads before today's post appeared.
There are some search engines out there that identify it as related to Sun Ra (I suspect due to it being tied to me and this blog) despite the unconventional file naming conventions I use. The only way to prevent the early downloads is to add a password but that's kind of a hassle and takes some of the fun out of blogging for me.
It's possible that the YouTube guy was one of the pickpockets or maybe he already had a copy handy and our posts are only related by chance.
Whichever the case, the world definitely needs Mo'Sun Ra shinin' onit so I'm trying to be glad the YouTube vid is out there. :^)
> and our posts are only related by chance.
ReplyDeletethat is what i thought - a wonderful synch? :-)
I-)