Sun Ra: Do The Impossible
“Poet, philosopher, Egyptologist, bandleader. Jazz visionary Sun Ra was all of these – and more. With his ever-evolving band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he produced more than 200 albums, stretching the boundaries of free-form jazz while weaving ancient Egypt, interstellar metaphors, and scientific musings into a singular musical and spiritual vision of Afrofuturism that continues to reverberate across generations.
Director Christine Turner takes us on an illuminating journey through the life of this multi-faceted artist, gracefully balancing recollections from the Arkestra’s still-devout band members and dancers with insightful interviews from music scholars, and unforgettable film and performance footage of Sun Ra himself.
The result is a portrait – informative, inspiring, and mind-bending – of a man whose audacious vision, otherworldly imagination, and uncompromising artistry helped shape not only the sound of jazz, but the cultural landscape of the 20th century and beyond.”
— via Firelight Films
Logo reference: sign held up by Dick Perchlik at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, 1972. It also happens to look a bit like a few of Martha’s more complicated hairdos.
Sun Ra’s visionary approach has too often been written off as quixotic or superfluous, but Do the Impossible expounds upon its subject with tender admiration.
— Jessie Carsten, Portland Mercury
Afternoon Inc. handled all design, typography, graphics and animation, responsible for the logo, text, archival headlines, montages, and selected image and collage sequences.
Typography is simple, both to stand apart from the archival footage and to visually unify the film.
Text elements were also systematically degraded to close the visual gap between the footage and text.
The White House Audio Tapes were featured extensively in the film. Poor audio quality necessitated a captioning setup.
Newspaper headlines and other archival materials were simplified where possible, with warm-but-precise animation.
