“In a time of displacement and division, their music reminds me that we can still build a shelter together,” says Lithuanian filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė, whose new doc premieres at Estonia’s Black Nights Film Festival.
The lives, the music and the cosmic visions of two members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, one of jazz’s longest-running avant-garde ensembles, get a spotlight in a new documentary.
Sounds of the Desert, the new film from Lithuanian writer, director, producer and artist Emilija Škarnulytė (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’s 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.
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 (PÖFF) 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.
Škarnulytė wrote, directed, produced and executive produced the film via her company Mirror Matter Productions. The development producer behind the doc is Norway’s Mer Film, which has also been on board of such recent festival hits as Harry Lighton’s Pillion (2026), Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (2025) and Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle (2025).
“I learned that home is not always somewhere we return to; sometimes it is something we create from what we carry,” Škarnulytė says. “My decade-long friendship with Abshalom Ben Shlomo opened a path into the Arkestra’s universe, where music holds memory, and imagination makes other ways of living possible.”
And she shares: “I 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.”
Concludes the filmmaker: “In 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.”
THR can now exclusively premiere the trailer for Sounds of the Desert. You really don’t need a longer written set-up to dive into this teaser for the musical and visual journey that awaits you.
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Source: The Hollywood Reporter · Georg Szalai
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