May 2, 2010

Inspiration: Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Megaphone

Posted by Sherrie Thai of Shaire Productions.

"Sita Sings the Blues" by Nina Paley is an online and theatrical film about her marriage breakup paralleled with that of Sita and Rama from the ancient Hindu tale "Ramayana". The film content is deemed controversial as it remakes the cultural tale in a light-hearted cartoon style, sparking some critics to label the piece as irreverent and offensive. The animation is accompanied by the wonderful jazz recordings of Annette Hanshaw. You could watch a brief clip by clicking on the image below (YouTube).

Sita Video Clip

What I find most interesting is that the entire film has been distributed freely under the Creative Commons license. Nina is a self-taught animator and produced most of the pieces in Flash. If you're interested, sit back and check out the film (1 hour, 21 min) here.