SUN RA: DO THE IMPOSSIBLE Director Christine Turner at Tribeca Festival 2025

Interview by Yasin Lago

The new documentary Sun Ra: Do the Impossible made its World Premiere at this year’s Tribeca Festival, and No Rest for the Weekend was there to speak with director Christine Turner.

Here’s what you need to know about the film: Poet, Egyptologist, cosmologist, historian, activist, bandleader, musician…jazz pioneer Sun Ra was all of these. In this illuminating biography, filmmaker Christine Turner takes us on a complex journey through the life of a complex man who either was born in Birmingham, Alabama, sent from Saturn, or both. With his band, the Arkestra, he extended the boundaries of free-form jazz, put his own mark on the standards, and pursued forays into electronic music, yet could be just as inspired to riff on “Over the Rainbow.”

His musical mission was also rooted as an agent toward advancing Afrofuturism, mixing interstellar metaphors (“space is the place”) and his own scientific explanations (“transmolecularization”) with the state of Black life in America. The film balances recollections from the Arkestra’s devout, still-in-awe band members and dancers, comments from big-fan historians, scholars and other musicians, and the musings of Sun Ra himself with unforgettable performance footage and scenes from a self-produced film to paint a portrait — informative, enriching, and at times mind-blowing — of a man who was as much a visionary as a he was a musician.

Sun Ra: Do the Impossible is now screening as part of Tribeca Festival. For information on tickets and showtimes, visit the festival website. Be sure to follow us here for more red carpet coverage, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos.

Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on June 13, 2025.