The Magic City – Birmingham According to Sun Ra

synopsis

Sun Ra, a unique visionary of musical Afrofuturism, continues to inspire contemporary filmmakers long after his death. This film explores his youth in Birmingham, Alabama. Ra himself claimed to have come from Saturn, yet it was in Birmingham that he laid the foundations of his mystical thought and music, seeing in his city an extraordinary world full of signs. The Magic City is as much a portrait of an eccentric young artist as of the racially segregated urban cosmos itself – a world at once political and magical, mundane and fantastical, unsettling and fascinating.

biography

Guillaume Maupin and Pablo Guarise are Brussels-based musicians and filmmakers. Maupin, active in alternative cinema and solo music, co-directed Water Music (2014). Guarise directed the documentary short The Tunes. Together they co-directed their first feature, The Magic City – Birmingham According to Sun Ra.

film details

director:	Guillaume Maupin, Pablo Guarise
producer:	Beata Saboova, Vincent Metzinger