Sita Sings the Blues is a 2008 American independent animated musical romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, produced and animated by American artist Nina Paley. It intersperses events from the Ramayana, light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets, musical interludes voiced with tracks by Annette Hanshaw and scenes from the artist's own life. The ancient mythological and modern biographical plot are parallel tales, sharing numerous themes.
Plot
The Ramayana
The film uses a pared-down adaptation of the legend that retains many of its finer details while adopting a perspective sympathetic towards Sita; in the director's words, the film is "a tale of truth, justice and a woman's cry for equal treatment."Director Nina Paley's long synopsis from the press section at SitaSingstheBlues.com , retrieved May 4, 2008
The plot joins the legend at the exile of the prince Rama from the capital city of Ayodhya, at the behest of king Dasharatha's favorite queen, Kaikeyi. Having earned the right to two favors by saving the Dasharatha's life, Kaikeyi attempts to secure her own son's inheritance over the eldest and favorite, Rama, by ordering him banished from the court. Sita, Rama's wife, determines to accompany her beloved husband, although the woods are dangerous and overrun with demons and evil spirits.
The demon king Ravana, encouraged by his spiteful ogress sister, Shurpanakha, hears of Sita's beauty and determines to kidnap her. He sends a golden hind, Maricha, past their dwelling to distract Rama, who tries to impress Sita by hunting the hind into the woods. In his absence, Ravana abducts Sita and demands that she submit to him willingly. Sita remains staunchly devoted to Rama and refuses to entertain the idea; Ravana sets a deadline for the ultimatum and Sita waits faithfully for Rama to rescue her.
Aided by the monkey prince Hanuman, Rama eventually discovers Sita's location and brings the monkey army to assist in her rescue. Ravana is slain and Sita is restored to her husband, although the people of Ayodhya express serious doubts concerning her fidelity during her confinement. She submits to a trial by fire, a test of her purity; upon throwing herself into the flames, she is immediately rescued by the gods, who all proclaim her devotion and fidelity.
She accompanies Rama back to the palace and soon falls pregnant. Rama overhearing one of his subjects beating and ejecting an unfaithful consort (claiming he is no Rama to accept and forgive her unfaithfulness), he reluctantly orders his brother Lakshman to abandon Sita in the forest. In the company of ascetics owned by the Sage Valmiki, she gives birth to her twin sons, Lava and Kusha, and raises them to love and praise their absent father.
Years later, Rama overhears their hymns of adoration to their father and locates their dwelling. Distressed and disappointed by Rama's actions during her reunion with Rama, Sita prays to the earth goddess, Bhumi-Devi, to swallow her as final proof of her purity and devotion, and the prayer is duly answered, despite the pleas of Rama and Lakshman.
Contemporary parallel In an episode taken from the director's own life, animator Nina Paley starts the film living happily in a San Francisco apartment with her husband and cat. Her husband then accepts the offer of a six-month contract working in Trivandrum, India, and moves there alone to take up the position. After a month of no contact, he calls to inform his wife that the contract has been extended another year.
Bewildered by his callous indifference to their separation, Nina sublets their apartment, leaves their beloved cat behind, and joins her husband in India. Upon her arrival, he appears deeply unenthusiastic to be reunited and demonstrates neither affection nor sexual interest. A while later, Nina flies to a meeting in New York, where she receives a brief e-mail from her husband telling her that their relationship is over. Sad and alone, she stays in New York, finding comfort in a new cat and her study of the Ramayana.
Cast Sanjiv Jhaveri as Dave, Dasharatha, Ravana, Dhobi, and Valmiki Nina Paley as Nina Aseem Chhabra as Shadow Puppet 1 (Hanuman) Bhavana Nagulapally as Shadow Puppet 2 (Sita) Manish Acharya as Shadow Puppet 3 (Rama) Deepti Gupta as Kaikeyi Debargo Sanyal as Rama Reena Shah as Sita (Speaking) Annette Hanshaw as Sita (Singing) (archived recordings) Pooja Kumar as Shurpanakha Alaudin Ullah as Maricha and Hanuman Nitya Vidyasagar as Lava and Kusha
Style and narrative The film uses several different styles of animation to separate and identify the parallel narratives.
Episodes from the Ramayana
Episodes with dialogue from the Ramayana are enacted using painted figures of the characters in profile, which strongly resemble the 18th-century Indian tradition of Rajput painting. The Rajput style of brush painting was principally enacted on manuscripts and commonly employed in the telling of epics such as the Ramayana. In the film, they serve as a more traditional style of dramatic narrative, although the dialogue is frequently ironic, inappropriately modern, or otherwise humorous.
The background in each scene is usually static and the poses of each character are kept minimal, with movement achieved by simply transporting the character across the screen in its set position. Speech is enacted by alternating the set pose of the face with a slightly liquified version where the jaw is lower.
Narration and discourse on the Ramayana
Three traditional Indian silhouette shadow puppets link episodes of the Ramayana with a lively, unscripted discussion of their personal impressions and knowledge of the epic.Silhouette animation was also employed in a similar but analogue fashion in the animation Princes et princesses by Michel Ocelot. They provide context and commentary for the story, which has innumerable incarnations and regional variations.Analysis of different variations of the Ramayana from the book Ramayana in the Arts of Asia by Garrett Kam, published by Asia Book, Bangkok in 2000, page retrieved May 4, 2008.
The voices were provided by Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally, and Manish Acharya, all from different regions of India and who had learned different versions of the Ramayana. Paley said in 2024 about the selection of the voices that "I really lucked out because I was hoping they would argue and they did." At screenings of the work in progress, Paley had noted a sex split in terms of interpretations of the Ramayana, and because of this she wanted puppets of at least one man and one woman.Becky Neiman. "Ancient History and Animation" (at 22m34s), DrDavidNeiman, 18 December 2023.
The voices are clearly contemporary and somewhat irreverent, unlike their visualisations, which further establishes the theme of contrast between "ancient tragedy and modern comedy";Front page of the official website, SitaSingstheBlues.com Chhaya Natak shadow theatre, for example, was commonly used in retellings of the Ramayana.PuppetIndia feature on shadow puppetry, retrieved May 4, 2008.
During these sections, the ideas and contradictions raised over the course of the puppets' discussions are visualized in animated photographic compositions in the background.
Musical episodes from the Ramayana
Episodes set to certain songs performed by jazz singer Annette Hanshaw are visualized, with Sita as the singing performer, using the strikingly modern technique of vector graphic animation.
The slick, bold style – driven by digital animation software – is at odds with the somewhat rustic quality of the old musical recordings but allows close synchronization with the vocals. The smooth, repetitive, side-scrolling movement affects assists in suspending the musical episode from the more consistent narrative plot.
Contemporary parallel
The modern, more personal element to the contemporary part of the story is narrated using the rough, energetic Squigglevision technique of traditional animation. It conveys the kind of restlessness inherent in the story and achieves a more light-hearted, universal tone with its simple, highly stylized renderings of character and environments.
Production
The production was largely completed by Paley, with support from Jake Friedman in the "Battle of Lanka" scene, primarily using 2D computer graphics and Flash Animation.
In addition to the central numbers recorded by Hanshaw, music was provided by Rohan, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Nik Phelps, Todd Michaelsen and Reena Shah of the duo My Pet Dragon, and by Pierre-Jean Duffour, composer and musician for the band Masaladosa. Shah contributed the voice of the Sita character, in addition to choreographing and performing the dance sequences rotoscoped by Paley for the animation.
Paley estimated her total hours of work to 9,360 and calculated she needed 6,240 people to see the 1.5-hour long film to make an "attention profit".Nina Paley. "Attention Economics ", ninapaley.com, 23 February 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
Music A soundtrack album was released digitally in 2009, consisting of original music composed by Todd Michaelsen and the various jazz standards.
Copyright problems The film uses a number of 1920s Annette Hanshaw recordings. Although Paley initially made sure these recordings were not covered by US copyright law, a number of other copyright issues surfaced, including state laws prior to US federal copyright law on recordings, rights to the compositions and the right to synchronize the recordings with images. These recordings were protected by state commerce and business laws passed at the time in the absence of applicable federal laws and were never truly "public domain". With the passage of the CLASSICS Act in 2018, all of the Hanshaw recordings in the film are scheduled to enter the public domain by 2030. All of the songs' compositions became public domain by January 1, 2025.
Without a distributor, Paley was unable to pay the approximately $220,000 that the copyright holders originally demanded. Eventually, a fee of $50,000 was negotiated. Paley took out a loan to license the music in early 2009.
In July 2011, Paley made a protest video regarding the film's deletion from YouTube in Germany due to what she regards as fraudulent take-down notice under the aegis of GEMA, Germany's major music and performance rights organization, but which may be an instance of a larger on-going conflict regarding copyright and royalties between YouTube and GEMA.
On January 18, 2013, Paley announced that she has changed the film's Creative Commons license from "CC-BY-SA" (the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-alike 3.0 Unported license) to "CC-0" (public domain); she made the ownership rights change in response to the continual red tape of rights procurement, even under the share-alike license.
Distribution Due to terms of the music license, one limited DVD pressing of 4,999 copies was printed.SStB Store talking about limited DVDs The film was released for free download starting in early March, 2009 "at all resolutions, including broadcast-quality, HD and film-quality image sequences", at the time licensed under "CC BY-SA". The freely downloaded files counted as "promotional copies" and were exempt from payments to the copyright holders of the songs.
Paley plans to make money through voluntary payments, ancillary products, sponsorships, the aforementioned limited DVD sales, and possibly other methods.