The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, June 1-7
Space Is the Place (1974)
Directed by John Coney
As protean and unclassifiable as Sun Ra’s music, Space is the Place is a bizarre hybrid between a 50s sci-fi b-movie and a militant blaxploitation gospel. Conceived as a vehicle for Ra’s music and Afro-Futurist cosmology, Coney’s film still shines its very own particular light. The jazz polymath lands on earth from a faraway galaxy to tell his brothers and sisters that the reason why they were never welcomed on this racist planet of ours is because they actually are not from it. The Black race, as per Ra’s outernationalist theories, is in fact from outer space, which is where our crazed keyboard player will try to bring them before catching the attention of government agents. Giovanni Vimercati (June 5, 7pm at Anthology Film Archives; Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise screens at 9:15pm)