Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

Director:

Nina Paley

Writers:

Nina Paley (written by)
Valmiki (book)

Release Date:

12 August 2009 (France)

Genre:

Animation | Comedy | Fantasy | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.

Plot:

An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

Plot Keywords:

Ramayana | Castle On Fire | Mistrust | Monkey Warrior | Exiled Prince

Awards:

5 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Annette Hanshaw	...	Sita (singing) (archive sound)
Aseem Chhabra	...	Narrator - Shadow Puppet 1 (voice)
Bhavana Nagulapally	...	Narrator - Shadow Puppet 2 (voice)
Manish Acharya	...	Narrator - Shadow Puppet 3 (voice)
Reena Shah	...	Sita (voice)
Sanjiv Jhaveri	...	Dave / Dasharatha / Ravana / Dhobi / Valmiki (voice)
Pooja Kumar	...	Surphanaka (voice)
Debargo Sanyal	...	Rama (voice)
Aladdin Ullah	...	Mareecha / Hanuman (voice)
Nitya Vidyasagar	...	Luv / Kush (voice)
Nina Paley	...	Nina (voice)
Deepti Gupta	...	Kaikeyi (voice)

Directed by
Nina Paley

Writing credits
Nina Paley		(written by)
Valmiki		(book "The Ramayana")

Produced by
Nina Paley	....	producer

Original Music by
Todd Michaelsen

Film Editing by
Nina Paley

Production Design by
Nina Paley

Sound Department
Rob Daly	....	additional sound effects editor
Georgia Hilton	....	sound re-recording mixer
James Nichols	....	sound consultant: Dolby
Greg Sextro	....	sound designer
Greg Sextro	....	sound recording engineer
Greg Sextro	....	supervising sound editor

Camera and Electrical Department
Michael Goodwin	....	photographer
Luna Hirai	....	photographer
Nina Paley	....	photographer

Animation Department
Nina Paley	....	animator

Music Department
Chris Robertson	....	music clearance

Other crew
John Abbe	....	donor
Clark Adams	....	donor
Aris Alhino	....	donor
David Anderson	....	donor
Andrew Anselmo	....	donor
William Ansley	....	donor
Ashish Banerjee	....	donor
E.J. Barnes	....	donor
Elizabeth Barrette	....	donor
Jorj Bauer	....	donor
Arna Beausoleil	....	donor
Michael A. Benitez	....	donor
Michael Blackmore	....	donor
Louise Block	....	donor
Kyle Borth	....	donor
Betsy Brazy	....	donor
Peter Brown	....	donor
Randolph Brown	....	donor
Robert Brown	....	donor
Mindi Broyles	....	donor
Charles Brubaker	....	donor
Michael Brutsch	....	donor
Annette Buckmaster	....	donor
Karl Bunker	....	donor
Marcia Camac	....	donor
Mort Camac	....	donor
Mike Caprio	....	donor: beloved cult leader
Colin Caret	....	donor
Mariko Chouinard	....	donor
Catherine Connor	....	donor
Tushar Dayal	....	donor
Sylvain Demongeot	....	donor
Michael Derksen	....	donor
Hrishikesh Deshpande	....	donor
Govind Dhar	....	donor: dubai angel
Mike Dickison	....	donor
Jym Dyer	....	donor: best boy
Douglas Edwards	....	donor
David Farris	....	donor
Lauren Faust	....	donor
Will Finn	....	donor
Gordon Fitch	....	donor: gaffer
Galen Fott	....	donor
Roger Freedman	....	donor
Jake Friedman	....	apprentice
Denise Fuller	....	video logger
Laura Giblin	....	donor
Mando Gomez	....	donor
Flash Gordon	....	donor (as Flash Gordon M.D.)
Erik Griott	....	donor
Carol Gunby	....	donor
Anurag Gupta	....	donor
Dennis Gustafsson	....	donor
Steve Guy	....	donor
M.E. Hamstrom	....	donor
Karen Hellyer	....	donor
Leigh Himel	....	donor
Dolfter Hofste	....	donor
Robert Holmen	....	donor
Doug Horning	....	donor
Lawrence Hosken	....	donor
Rob Igo	....	donor: second key grip
Sean Igo	....	donor
Navin Jain	....	donor
Robert Jersak	....	donor
Scott Jonas	....	donor
Tanya Jones	....	donor
Harry Joseph	....	donor: dailies projectionist
Chloe Kakris	....	donor
Ari Kangas	....	donor: kitty trainer
Zachary Katz	....	donor
George Kelly	....	donor
Soyeon Kim	....	donor
Melinda Klayman	....	donor
Scott Kravitz	....	donor
Nancy Kreml	....	donor
Akarsha Kumar	....	donor
Shakthi Kumar	....	donor
Suresh Kumar	....	donor
Ariel Lagares	....	web support
John Langes	....	donor
Minette Layne	....	donor
Ken Levis	....	donor: caterer
Scott Leyes	....	donor
Celia Y. Liang	....	donor
Marc Lieberman	....	donor
Edward Liu	....	donor
Christian Long	....	donor
Aparna Malladi	....	donor
Mitch Manzer	....	donor
Nigel McDougall	....	donor
Ann McPhail	....	donor
Clark McPhail	....	donor
Michael Meagher	....	donor: production angel
L. Mark Medernach	....	donor (as Mark Medernach)
Will Mendes	....	donor
Michel Milano	....	donor
Alok Mohanty	....	donor
Clayton Moraga	....	donor
Jody Morgan	....	donor
Christian Morgensen	....	donor
Mihaela Munteanu	....	donor
Hannah Murdoch	....	donor
Katja Murray	....	donor
Bhavana Nagulapally	....	donor
Melanie Nazelrod	....	donor
Paul Nelson	....	donor
Jay Nungesser	....	donor
Colm O'Riain	....	donor
Chinmay Ogale	....	donor
Mike Owens	....	donor
Marcy Page	....	donor: production angel
Elizabeth Paley	....	donor: chameleon coordinator
Hiraim Paley	....	donor: safety net
Jean Paley	....	donor: safety net
Joshua Paley	....	donor
Hsinping Pan	....	donor
Philip Pangrac	....	donor: production angel
Miroslav Piskacek	....	donor
Brent Plater	....	donor
Paolo Polesello	....	donor: production angel
Joseph Posner	....	donor
Shubhra Prakash	....	donor
Michael Purugganan	....	donor: genetic engineer (as Dr. Michael Purugganan)
Sadia Rahman	....	donor
Ellen Rapkin	....	donor
David Reynolds	....	donor
Elizabeth Reynolds	....	donor
Bruce Reznick	....	donor
Peter Riemer	....	donor
Clyde Robinson	....	donor
Jeff Rodman	....	donor
Marino Romeo	....	donor
Phil Rynda	....	donor
Satyajit Sahu	....	donor
Jane Scheppke	....	donor
Richard A. Schumacher	....	donor
Clyde Seeger	....	donor
Fred Seibert	....	donor
Reena Shah	....	choreographer
Harsha Shanthaveerappa	....	donor
Ducky Sherwood	....	donor: Sita body double
Tauby Shimkin	....	donor
Alexis Silsbe	....	donor
Indra Sinha	....	donor
Sameer Siruguri	....	donor
Shawn Smith	....	donor
Rachelle Spero	....	donor
Rae Spooner	....	donor
Deidre Staugham	....	donor
Seth Steinberg	....	donor
James Street	....	donor
Suriya Subramanian	....	donor
Thomas Matthew Swain	....	donor: temple construction supervisor
Toby Thain	....	donor
Sara Thaves	....	donor
Brett Thompson	....	donor
Joy V. Thornton	....	donor
Russell Todd	....	donor
Carter Tomassi	....	donor
Heather Torrey	....	donor
Peter Vachuska	....	donor
Nessie Van Loan	....	donor: demon wrangler
Anthony Varghese	....	donor
Praveen Vavilala	....	donor
Mallika Velamuri	....	donor
Ches Wajda	....	donor
Roz Warren	....	donor
Elizabeth Watkins	....	donor
Elliot Weinberg	....	donor
Joyce Weiser	....	donor
Erik Westlund	....	donor
Lesa Wronski	....	donor
Corey Yanofsky	....	donor
John Yewell	....	donor
Adam Zaner	....	donor: moon wrangler
Stefan Zauscher	....	donor: nanoscale coordinator

Thanks
Ashok Banker	....	thanks
Michael Brooks	....	thanks
Karl Cohen	....	thanks
Reba Daniel	....	thanks
Rebecca Goldstein	....	thanks
Frank Gresham	....	thanks
George Griffin	....	thanks
Stephen Hersh	....	thanks
Amandeep Jawa	....	thanks
Stephen Parr	....	thanks
Samuel D. Pollard	....	thanks
Anezka Sabek	....	thanks
Gurmeet Singh	....	thanks

Distributors

• Eurozoom (2009) (France) (theatrical)
• Gkids (2009) (USA) (theatrical)
• FilmKaravan (2009) (USA) (DVD)
• IndieFlix (2010) (worldwide) (all media)

Other Companies

• Diamond Time  music clearances

Also Known As:

"Сита поёт блюз" - Russia
"I sita tragoudaei ta blues" - Greece (festival title)
"Sita Sings the Blues" - Argentina (festival title)
"Sita canta el blues" - Argentina
"Sita chante le blues" - France
"Sita peva bluz" - Serbia
"Sita spiewa bluesa" - Poland (imdb display title)
"Sita zpívá blues" - Czech Republic

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG

Trivia:

There are two cats in the film - Lexi and Bruno. Lexi is the striped cat that Nina and Dave had in San Francisco. Bruno is the black cat that Nina has in her apartment in New York. According to Nina Paley's Director's Commentary, Bruno does, in fact, sleep in Nina's armpit, as shown at the end of the movie.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: The musicians are shown playing with the left and right hands reversed. The clarinet, like all woodwinds, is played with the left hand at the top. The violin is held with the left hand and bowed with the right. But in the movie, the clarinet player has the right hand at the top, and the violin is held with the right and bowed with the left.

Quotes:

Surphanaka:Dear brother, Ravana, have you seen Rama's wife Sita...? She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Her skin is fair like the lotus blossom. Her eyes are like lotus pools. Her hands are like... from... lotuses. Her breasts like... BIG... ROUND... FIRM... JUICY... LOTUSES.

Movie Connections:

References Mr India (1987)

Soundtrack:

Ganpati

A monumental achievement for Nina Paley, and a bloody good time for the rest of us

There are some movies that cannot be viewed separately from the story of their making - 'Citizen Kane', 'Apocalypse Now', virtually anything directed by Werner Herzog - and I feel that 'Sita Sings the Blues' is one of them. To put it mildly, Nina Paley has completed a Herculean task by making this film: 82 minutes of animation, fluid and beautiful, in four different styles, all on her own, on her own personal computer. For that fact alone, 'Sita' is a marvel.

The picture leaks creativity at the edges. This is readily apparent even in the basic idea of it - the Ramayana of Valmiki, with songs by '20s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw as the singing voice of Sita, intercut with the India-related breakdown of the creator's own marriage, which paralleled Sita's, narrated by three 'Desi' English-speaking Indians that can't agree on the details or the motivations of the characters and analyze the story constantly and hilariously as they tell it. And all of it is animated.

The animation is, like the rest of the movie, bursting with life. There are four styles, each used for a different story thread - a cardboard-cutout style for the narrated bits and hallucinatory interludes; a scratchy, Richard Condie-like style for the autobiographical bits; a Mughal miniature-like style for the traditional Ramayana bits; and a tweening-heavy vector graphics style for the song-and-dance Ramayana-meets-the-Jazz-Era bits. The first two thirds of the film establish which style is used for which story very firmly, making transitions and digressions easier for the audience to handle - a glimpse of a scribbled New York prepares us for autobiography, colorful rooftops for a Ramayana segment. Thus the picture's leaping about becomes almost natural after a while, and is never jarring. Also, laying down these ground rules pays off toward the end of the movie, when Paley starts to break them: this grabs the viewers' attention and sets the audience on alert when voices that we've been conditioned to expect while looking at cutouts intrude upon Flash animation. In short, Paley makes sure transitions aren't jarring so she can jar us with them later, to good effect.

For example: at one point in the movie, the three Indian narrators tell us of a trick by an evil king to lure Rama away from his wife Sita so that the king can kidnap her while he is gone. We watch the plan hatched in cardboard-cutout style. We see it executed in Mughal miniature style. And we see the actual kidnapping occur during a Hanshaw song in the vector graphics style. Rama learns of his wife's disappearance in . . . Mughal miniature style. You, watching this, can never truly be impatient because you want to see what the screen will do next. That is high praise for a filmmaker.

Most importantly, of course, the film is hysterically funny. The most humor (at least for me, as a Pakistani who gets the in-jokes) flows from the narrators, who try to remember the old story as they go along, discuss it, question its logic, think better of questioning its logic ('Don't challenge these stories!') and generally provide non-stop entertainment before the plot - which, really, is hardly a narrative masterwork - can move along. There are also several satirical barbs directed at the Ramayana as the behavior of Rama and Sita grows ever more unrealistic to twenty-first century listeners, what with sexism and vague motivations, but only the prickliest devotee can claim offense. The movie is, above all, good-natured - although Paley really is very VERY angry at that husband of hers.

Just a note for anyone that understands Urdu or Hindi: the bizarre three-minute intermission halfway through the movie is the funniest part of the film due to one remark by what can only be a middle-aged auntie in the movie theater about the nature of the 'picture'. Keep your ears picked as the countdown ends. Trust me. It's easy to miss.

Why only an 8, then? Reading what I've written, I sound absolutely ecstatic. But then, 9 stars for me is only for classic material, and I don't think 'Sita' is quite that. This is no masterpiece. It's just a thoroughly enjoyable movie that bursts with innovation and - pure and simple - irresistible style. Not enough filmmakers these days make movies that need to be 'pulled off'. Making 'Sita' cannot have been a safe or easy choice. Hats off to Nina Paley.

By the way, due to copyright restrictions on the Hanshaw songs, Paley has been unable to release the film in the traditional way (for profit), and is giving it away for free on her website. Go watch it, and be sure to thank her afterwards.

Highly recommended.