Series: Black Sun, White Moon: Exploring Black Cinematic Imaginations of Space
The same year of Armstrong’s moon landing, Sun Ra and the Archestra land on an unknown planet in the fictional narrative Space is the Place. They declare the planet a new colony for African Americans and begin a long, arduous journey of recruiting settlers from Earth, using music as a medium for transportation. Sun Ra was a jazz musician, famous for his experimental compositions and his larger-than-life persona, and he is acknowledged as a pioneer in Afrosurrealist traditions, in part due to this film. Contains mature content.
Afronauts follows an ingenious group of Zambian villagers as they build a homemade rocket in a daring bid to put the first African woman on the moon. Diandra Forrest, Yolonda Ross, and Hoji Fortuna star. In writer/director Bodomo’s words, the film centers “the perspective of exiles and outsiders, the people who most need the promises of the space race.”
Polly One is a silent meditation on the 2017 total solar eclipse from a Saluda, N.C., vantage point. The film stares directly into the light, capturing elemental power at its source and is dedicated to director Kevin Jerome Evenson’s grandmother, who passed away one day before the cosmic event.
