Presented in association with SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music, Queen’s University Belfast.
The Magic City : Sun Ra
S.A.R.C.
Sunday 24 January, 6.00pm
£12.00/£10.00 (Unwaged)
Buy TicketsPresented in association with SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music, Queen’s University Belfast.
Before the world (and the cosmos) came to know him as the Afrofuturist pioneer of “space jazz”, Sun Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham (the other one), deep in the heart of segregated Alabama.
Drawing on the memories of Sun Ra’s family and neighbours alongside rare footage and archival interviews, The Magic City reflects on the life of Sun Ra through the city that shaped his formative years. It is a story of resistance through imagination, exploring how the constraints of a divided city fueled a lifelong quest for space-age liberation, and as you can imagine, the soundtrack is out of this world!
On May 22, 1914, Herman Poole Blount arrived on Earth in Birmingham, Alabama, known as The Magic City, a segregated industrial town in the rural South. After leaving for Chicago at the age of 32, he would become Sun Ra, one of the most eccentric and prolific jazz musicians of this century, as well as the founder of a strange cosmic philosophy.
A portrait of the artist as a young man as well as one of a city through time, The Magic City tells the story of Sun Ra’s relation to this city-universe that is at once political and magical, familiar and fantastic, disturbing and fascinating.
Short screening of ‘The QUBe Myth-Science Space Arkestra perform the music of Sun Ra’ 10mins before the screening.
This film is part of Now Press Play.
Now Press Play 2026 is supported by Film Hub NI, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, awarding funding from the National Lottery
Tickets also available from:
Visit Belfast | 028 90 246 609
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