Press for Success

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

Share

Author: Nina Paley

Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.

8 thoughts on “Press for Success”

  1. Hello Nina.I am from India.

    Congrats for many accolades you have received for “Sita Sings the Blues”. And wishing you much more success.

    Nina, I would like to point out some mistakes. Sita is a Pativrata, Pativrata is someone who is solely devoted to her husband, and is 100% pure. This means that Sita is someone who is pure totally, and a woman like her can never wear any dress which exposes her skin.I thought that your drawing of Sita was not appropriate.

    In India, it was considered that sex was solely for the purpose of creating babies. And women were dressed in sari , which covered all their body.Finally, You should have done some amount of research and then drawn Sita. But mistakes happen, my comment was not to offend you, but rather it was to tell you what I feel.

    Anyways Good Day
    🙂

  2. Hey Nina – Congratulations on the well-deserved praise for Sita. I saw it yesterday in Seattle and thought it was wonderful. Big crowd, great reaction…hooray! Thank you for sharing your talent and making this movie happen.

  3. Hello Bhargav Sai– I have great respect for your opinion and your culture and your religion. However, I think you should wait and see the actual film itself, in its entirety, before deciding whether or not Nina Paley’s drawings of Sita are inappropriate or not. I am an American woman married to an Indian man–we live here in New York City, where we recently saw Miss Paley’s wonderful film at the Tribeca Film Festival (we went after it was recommended to us; neither of us know Miss Paley personally). After seeing the film, my husband (who is Hindu, and knows the Ramayana fairly well), remarked how much he enjoyed and appreciated Miss Paley’s work. When you see the film someday for yourself, it will hopefully be clear to you that her drawings of Sita and the Ramayana are meant to be, very purposefully, only from the “lens” of one specific American woman (Miss Paley herself) who has just been dumped by her husband via email. This very painful event clearly influences how she viewed the story of the Ramayana while she was reading it, and the resulting drawings in the film represent this very personal perception of the epic (as a whimsically Westernized feminist tale). It is this very human specificity that makes Miss Paley’s film so beautifully unique. “Sita Sings The Blues” is by no means presenting itself as the official animated adaptation of The Ramayana (if it were, then Miss Paley would have just called it “The Ramayana”; and if that were the case, your concerns would definitely have been valid). At any rate, Bhargav Sai, I do hope you get to see this lovely film at some point. And congratulations to you, Miss Paley.

  4. Nina,
    I just saw Sita Monday night at SIFF and it is now my favorite movie! Really! I am gushing about it to anyone who will listen. I can’t even express to you how much I loved it. Such a beautiful tribute to Annette Hanshaw; I think you have created a whole new generation of fans. Thank you thank you thank you for making such a wonderful film!

  5. Indeed visually delicious ! Funny and truly innovative.Especially loved the conversations between those shadow characters (their accent as well !).Needless to say that the in-between Bollywood style dance sequence and the beats by ‘MasalaDosa’ team was indeed a treat to the senses. Enjoy the success Nina, but what’s next ? A full version of epic Ramayana ?

    PS:I guess there’s nothing wrong with the depiction of Sita.Even in India Sita was portrayed by many artists in similar ways.People do have different perspectives regarding that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *