Feature Competition 3: Sita Sings the Blues
| Original Title: | Sita Sings the Blues |
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| Director(s): | Nina Paley |
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| Production Company: | Nina Paley Productions, LLC | ||
| Year of Production: | 2008 |
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| Nationality: | USA |
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| Screening Format: | 35mm |
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| Runnning Time: | 81:30 | ||
| Category: | Animated Feature |
Techniques:
Cut-Outs, 2D Computer, Rotoscope, Flash & Other Techniques
Cut-Outs, 2D Computer, Rotoscope, Flash & Other Techniques
Synopsis:
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."
"Nina Paley's delightfully subversive feminist musical version of the "Ramayana," spans continents and millennia in parallel stories of two wives being unfairly dumped, one in the American autobiographical present, the other in the mythical Indian past. Punctuated
with classic bluesy ballads mouthed by a highly stylized Betty Boop-ish "Sita" and sung by '20s jazz icon Annette Hanshaw via vintage 78s, Paley's feature, along with Bill Plympton's
"Idiots & Angels," [also at the OIAF] constitutes an irrefutable argument for classic 2-D animation as a viable, vibrant low-budget arthouse medium for adults."
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."
"Nina Paley's delightfully subversive feminist musical version of the "Ramayana," spans continents and millennia in parallel stories of two wives being unfairly dumped, one in the American autobiographical present, the other in the mythical Indian past. Punctuated
with classic bluesy ballads mouthed by a highly stylized Betty Boop-ish "Sita" and sung by '20s jazz icon Annette Hanshaw via vintage 78s, Paley's feature, along with Bill Plympton's
"Idiots & Angels," [also at the OIAF] constitutes an irrefutable argument for classic 2-D animation as a viable, vibrant low-budget arthouse medium for adults."
"Une version musicale délicieusement féministe et subversive du "Râmâyana", réalisée par Nina Paley, qui traverse continents et millénaires par ses deux histoires parallèles de deux épouses injustement délaissées, une dans un présent autobiographique américain, l'autre dans le passé mythique de l'Inde. Ce film de Paley, ponctué de ballades classiques genre “blues”, joué par une "Sita" hautement stylisée à la Betty Boop et par la légende du jazz des années 1920 Annette Hanshaw par l'intermédiaire de vieux 78 tours, tout comme "Idiots & Angels" de Bill Plympton [aussi au FIAO], constitue un argument irréfutable comme quoi l'animation classique en 2-D est un moyen maison pour créer un art viable, vibrant et à petit budget pour adultes." Ronnie Schieb, Variety.
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| Nina Paley (b. May 3, 1968, Champaign IL, USA) is a longtime veteran of syndicated comic strips, creating "Fluff" (Universal Press Syndicate), "The Hots" (King Features), and her own alternative weekly "Nina's Adventures." In 1998 she began making independent animated festival films, including the controversial yet popular environmental short, "The Stork." In 2002 Nina followed her then-husband to Trivandrum, India, where she read her first Ramayana. This inspired her first feature, Sita Sings the Blues, which she animated and produced single-handedly over the course of 5 years on a home computer. Nina teaches at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and is a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow. |