Preceded by short: The Cry of Jazz (Edward Bland, USA, 1959). A late-fifties film in which black intellectuals protest the death of jazz at the hands of white America. Soundtrack by Sonny Ray a.k.a. Sun Ra. (35 mins, B&W, 16mm, From Grove Press Films) Shamanistic music-maker and Afro-surrealist Sun Ra descends to earth as an astral messenger in Space Is the Place, an otherworldly film that combines intergalactic bebop and riffs about black liberation. Sun Ra, the spacey ruler of a cosmic Eden, heads for the blue planet where the black population isn't faring well. Believing that harmonious music can heal these troubled souls, he alights in Oakland, aglow with space-age sermonizing. He is then engaged in a bewildering battle of wits with the Overseer, a pimp-like godfather who rules the inner city. Director Coney's free-form deconstruction of the blaxploitation film takes to heart Sun Ra's cosmic philosophy of music as a liberating force. Performed by The Intergalactic Myth-Science Solar Arkestra, Sun Ra's music suffuses the hip-edelic atmosphere. Whimsical, funky, and alchemically vague, Space Is the Place takes on Afro-liberation, political delusion, and whatever else crosses the ever-expanding mind of Sun Ra.-Steve Seid