Tribeca Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (2025)
No shortage already of moving pictures studying Sun Ra from one direction or another, whether tackling the man, the music, the mysticism, the fact he said he was from the planet Saturn, or some combo of the lot. Christine Turner's documentary "Sun Ra: Do the Impossible" keeps the lid on its mind-expanding contents by narrowing the focus, mostly to testimonies from past members of the Sun Ra Arkestra about life in the big man's big band, plus some scholarly perspective on the social currents swirling around him in the civil rights era. It doesn't follow those threads too far out to other stations, such as his personal life, or influence on Kenneth Anger and the American underground, or his beaming directly into the nation's living rooms via "Saturday Night Live" in 1978. It's a sampler rather than a study guide, a summary of something resistant to summary; a Sunny interval.