I’m getting a lot of requests for Sita Sings the Blues DVDs, but unfortunately they’re not yet available for sale. The film’s sales rep has asked until the end of July to try to make a deal with a US distributor. I can’t release a DVD before then, because distributors all want DVD rights. Also, most festivals won’t accept films that are already available on DVD. So for now, we must wait. By the end of the Summer, Sita will either have a distributor, with an estimated release date for the DVD; or Sita won’t have a distributor, in which case I’ll publish and sell DVDs myself. Thank you for your patience!

Thank you Seattle International Film Festival Audiences for the nice things you’re saying about Sita. I’m really touched, and wish I could have been there.

Update: this just in (scroll to last entry). Oh my goodness!

puss
pussy
pusser
pussy cat
pooty tat
pootae
potato
potato head
mr. potato head
potato cat
mr. cat
mr. boy
boy cat
boykit
babycat
kittybones
mr. fuzz
fuzzums
fuzzcakes
fuzz-lumps
mr. love
love cat
fuzz-potato
fuzzbucket
fur buckets
fuzzbucket-o-love
furbags
purrbag
purr box
sweetness
sweetcakes
sugar-cat
lovekit
kittums
kitten
kit-hen
kit-tay
gato
gato negro
chatul
kätzchen
muffin
pumpkin
pumpkin-head
my beloved
cat-head
catnip
catnips
nips
nipper
lovenips
mr. nip
mr. bite
cat0r
snuggums
snugs
potato boy
boogums
boogs
booples
boopus
boopy cat
boopums
shed-meister
sugar
sweetcat
stinkball
stink-butt
mr. disgusting
mahaatma
Brunito
Brunalito
Bruno

Another round of articles about Sita Sings the Blues:

“imaginative, giddily witty, visually delicious”
–Seattle Weekly (Editor’s Pick)

Animating a Personal Flash Epic: The Making of Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues
a long, detailed, and honest (maybe too honest) interview with Bryant Frazer for Film&Video

Gods, Princes and Demons
New Statesman article by Salil Tripathi about the British Library’s Ramayana exhibit, including a paragraph on Sita

Nina Paley’s Path to “Sita Sings the Blues”
a long article by Ed Liu for ToonZone

An ongoing feature in which I recommend the work and websites of people who buy me lunch. Today’s entry: Joan Hilty!

Joan Hilty’s been in comics since the bad old days when I worked in the field. Sexism, stupidity, superheroes on steroids - she’s seen it all. But unlike me, Joan’s not a quitter. Not only is she still doing her own comics, she’s also an editor at DC. Over falafel, babaganush, hummus, and homemade pita at Gazala Place, we agreed that alternative comics have improved dramatically in the past two decades, while newspaper strips have somehow slid further into decline (overall - there are always exceptions). Joan and I have run in similar circles for years, and were both recently - but separately - reunited with our mutual friend Roz. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to meet her!

Would YOU like to be featured in Eats for Endorsement? Then buy me dinner. My email address is at the bottom of the middle column, the one with the pictures linking to my movies and cartoons and stuff.

Seattle International Film Festival May 25 and 26 (I can’t attend, alas)

Annecy Animation Festival June 9-14 - I’ll be there

Cinema City in Novi Sad, Serbia, June 14-21 - I’ll be there too

Avignon/New York Film Festival June 25-29 - and there too I will be

Taipei Film Festival June 20-July 6 - I will probably miss this, unless someone buys me a ticket from France to Taiwan for June 30. Anyone?

British National Library July 8 - yes I will be there! Why do you think I’m subletting my apartment?

And then I will come back to NY for at least a week.

My short film The Stork went missing recently - in fact its entire host, clusterfunction.com, was alarmingly missing from the interwebs for a while. But it’s back now (whew!), and cluster-functional as ever. Nonetheless, here’s a link for another host, Channel13. (The clusterfunction link can always be accessed by clicking the little picture of a stork head on the right-hand column of this page. Click all the different pictures and see what happens!)

Channel13, like Frederator before them and every other corporate or commercial or just plain big web site wants me, the media creator, to direct my fans to their site for their benefit, throwing in a small bone - you can vote for my film, and if it wins it’ll be broadcast on Channel 13 next Saturday, and I’ll get $500. I can tell you that in spite of countless friends and family voting for the Sita Trailer, it failed to win the “Freddie Award” - meaning some other creator managed to send even more of their friends and family to the site (for free of course). So I’m not very optimistic about “winning,” and I’m pretty ambivalent about these contests, as they exploit small non-commercial fan communities. However, I want both the Sita Trailer and The Stork to be seen by as many people as possible, so I’ll continue to let bigger websites use them as hit-bait under the guise of a contest. I guess. Maybe.

Oh yeah, feel free to vote. Or not.

UPDATE: “Stork” didn’t win, but did lead for a while. Thanks to everyone who voted for it!

TV and Radio:

BBC World

Morning Edition, WNYC

My First Time, WNBC

AVS TV

Magazines:

Premiere’s Top 10 Films of Tribeca 2008

“wittily written, brilliantly acted”
–Variety

“beautifully audacious”
–Premiere

“One-Woman Pixar”
–Wired

“a unique depiction of the epic”
–Zee News

“…both heartfelt and consistently witty, the type of low-fi animated musical that puts Disney to shame.”
–FilmMaker Magazine/IFP

“a strange and beautiful little film”
–Spout

“funny and eye-popping and never bogs down.”
–Nerve

“One of the best films playing at the…Tribeca Film Festival this year”
–New York Magazine

Other Blogs:

“mind-blowing…The overall look of the film was fantastic; the graphics stunning and the flow between parallel threads excellent.”
– apercevoir

“…a triumph of individual creation.”
–JTAbron

“It’s touching, encouraging, fun, and educational. I LOVE IT!”
–tiny blog

“The narration was hilarious, the quality of animation never faltered no matter what the style and the songs were the most incredible fit - astonishing that a jazz song from the 1920’s would match exactly with a story from ~500 BC. “
–Yewknee/Michael Eades

“beautiful, funny, and kind of brilliant.”
–Two-Timing My Scrapbook

“Hopefully this movie finds its way to Thailand in order to give people a glimpse of how traditional material can still be meaningful today.”
–comment on Thai Film Journal

I got back from Stuttgart, still coughing (albeit less), and slept for about 2 days. Now I’m slogging through my backed-up emails and figuring out what to do next. I looks like I’ll be touring the Eastern Hemisphere most of June and July, and sub-letting my Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Interested parties please get in touch - the apartment comes with my cat Bruno, who needs daily food and love.

You’d think I’d be all overjoyed about this, but actually I’m stressed and confused. Will Sita get a distribution deal? Will it win an award? Awards drive me crazy - I always want one, “for the sake of the film,” I tell myself, but surely it’s for my ego. Press too is like coke, I always want more; google blogsearch is becoming a compulsion. I compare Sita’s progress with other films, which can’t be good. I’d like to detach from all this, but what about the festivals? This is my big chance to attend film festivals, it’s not like I can postpone them all until next year. But film festivals are orgies of comparison: who’s getting the most press? the best reviews? whose shows are selling out first? who’s getting the award? These are enemies of the Muse, and I’m not sufficiently mature to maintain my equilibrium in their midst.

Also, I am out of money and racking up expenses like you wouldn’t believe. Take “film festival rights”: publishers charge at least $500 a song just to play the film at festivals - and I don’t get money at festivals, I spend money to make the prints and stuff. I’m spending money I don’t have to get the film out there, and although something always works out, I have no idea how I’m going to pay for French subtitles (the “honor” of attending the Annecy Animation Festival is costing me over $5,000), or legal fees, or rent. Someday the film could bring money in, but I’m not sure how I’m going to make it to that day, if it ever comes.

What a whiney post this has turned out to be. On the brighter side, I’ll post next about all the sweeet reviews Sita got at Tribeca, with tasty little quotes selected by Publicity Bitch herself. But I am not Publicity Bitch. I am a servant of the Muse who is losing her way.

Tribeculosis kept me home from Raw-Chester, but I’m still going to Germ-any tomorrow. Still coughing, but I’m on antibiotics now so presumably it won’t get any worse.

Here it is: the reality show My First Time, produced and directed by Jesse Mann. It follows three first-time feature directors - including me - at the Tribeca Film Festival.

I do! Do you?