The Magic City: Birmingham According to Sun Ra

Co-presented with Ars Nova Workshop

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. (Guillaume Maupin & Pablo Guarise, Belgium/Italy, 2025, 97 min)

Followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and special guests