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<\/p>\n\n\tThe lives, the music and the cosmic visions of two members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, one of jazz\u2019s longest-running avant-garde ensembles, get a spotlight in a new documentary. <\/p>\n
\n\tSounds of the Desert, the new film from Lithuanian writer, director, producer and artist Emilija \u0160karnulyt\u0117 (Burial), follows Abshalom Ben Shlomo, who died in 2024, and Marshall Allen, who is still performing at age 102. The cinematic meditation on the avant-garde musicians unfolds through interviews, archival footage and live performance. To the sounds of the Sun Ra Arkestra\u2019s music, the film travels through landscapes shaped by and tied to its sound, such as the Arkestral House of Sun Ra in Philadelphia, Chicago, a forest in Lithuania and the Negev Desert.<\/p>\n
Set to world premiere on Nov. 18 in the Rebels With a Cause Competition at the 30th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (P\u00d6FF) in Estonia, Sounds of the Desert dives into the Arkestra, which was founded by Sun Ra in Chicago in the mid-1950s and brought together avant-garde music, cosmic philosophy, ritual and spectacle. The ensemble became a foundational influence on Afrofuturism and imagining outer space as a realm of Black freedom.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Sounds of the Desert\u2019 <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of P\u00d6FF<\/p>\n
\n\t\u0160karnulyt\u0117 wrote, directed, produced and executive produced the film via her company Mirror Matter Productions. The development producer behind the doc is Norway\u2019s Mer Film, which has also been on board of such recent festival hits as Harry Lighton\u2019s Pillion (2026), Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value (2025) and Magnus von Horn\u2019s The Girl With the Needle (2025).<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned that home is not always somewhere we return to; sometimes it is something we create from what we carry,\u201d \u0160karnulyt\u0117 says. \u201cMy decade-long friendship with Abshalom Ben Shlomo opened a path into the Arkestra\u2019s universe, where music holds memory, and imagination makes other ways of living possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd she shares: \u201cI wanted Sounds of the Desert to move through that universe, listening to the echoes between people, landscapes and histories. The Arkestra created a cosmos not to turn away from the world, but to find the strength to live within it and transform it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Sounds of the Desert\u2019 <\/p>\n
\n\tConcludes the filmmaker: \u201cIn a time of displacement and division, their music reminds me that we can still build a shelter together, one that travels with us wherever we go.\u201d<\/p>\n
THR can now exclusively premiere the trailer for Sounds of the Desert. You really don\u2019t need a longer written set-up to dive into this teaser for the musical and visual journey that awaits you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lives, the music and the cosmic visions of two members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,1042,60,270,84156,286133],"class_list":["post-675588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-poff","tag-poff-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}