Screen shot from Space is the Place. In this particular scene in a desert, Sun Ra plays a card game called “The End of the World,” with the Overseer (Ray Johnson), who is dressed in white and drives a white Cadillac. Sun Ra pulls out a spaceship card and the Arkestra play the song “Calling Planet Earth” as their spaceship lands in Oakland, CA.

Some Sun Ra You Tube for you and some house cleaning on the Wackies and Kodwo Eshun pages.

More on the second Ra clip:

Don Letts directed this [Brother from another Planet (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4] beautiful and hilarious film about one of the truly great eccentric geniuses of music – Sun Ra. It was the third documentary we’ve made for the BBC series Originals – previously we profiled Robert Wyatt and Gil Scott-Heron.

Jez Nelson – who produced the programme – has had a long fascination with Ra since meeting him in 1990.

We’re currently in production with the next in the Originals series – a film about P-Funk legend George Clinton.

The show was broadcast on Friday October 28, 2005 at 9pm on BBC4. —Somethinelse.com