Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
Sita Sings the Blues won Best Script at the Athens International Film Festival. It’s an honor I credit to Sita’s talented collaborators, especially Manish Acharya, Aseem Chhabra and Bhavana Nagulapally, who improvised all the narration.
Sita also received an Honorable Mention for “Best Animated Feature Film” at the Ottawa Animation Festival.
So the film is in excellent health, even while I am a quivering wreck.
Sita collaborator Pooja Kumar (Surphanaka) points our attention to a good ol’-fashioned Ram Leela at Lincoln Center in New York. This is a much more traditional presentation of the story of Rama (it’s “a victory of good over evil”) in contrast to my very personal, unconventional spin in Sita Sings the Blues. Here are some commercials from youtube:
The Ram Leela is Saturday, October 4 at 3:30 pm at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.
That same day, other Sita collaborator Aseem Chhabra (Shadow Puppet #1) hosts South Asian Writers Speak Out for Obama, a fundraiser featuring Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, Manil Suri, and Akhil Sharma, with filmmaker Mira Nair as emcee and jazz music provided by the AZA Jazz Collective.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
6:00pm – 9:00 pm
(Program will begin at 6:30pm.)Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012
www.lepoissonrouge.com
Can you believe that lady? High ideals are all well and good, but she knew the rules. So unprofessional! She didn’t have to take that bus. If you don’t like the rules, don’t ride the bus. I’m an industry professional, and I give up my seat all the time – that’s what “professional” means. What if it were YOUR bus? You certainly wouldn’t want just any riff-raff riding it as they pleased. Plus if she’s so great, she should have raised $220,000 for skin-lightening cream – problem solved. Or buy her own bus! But no, she thinks she’s so special. What a whiner.
Too bad people forget the story of Rosa Parks – but then it’s been hard to see the documentary Eyes on the Prize over the past decade, thanks to unconstitutional copyright laws.
OK, so I’m not in Athens right now. I left Israel early. I got sick, is what happened. A little food poisoning, a little irritable bowel syndrome, a little appetite loss and not eating for days, a little nervous breakdown, and next thing you know I’m back in New York trying to recover in a friend’s apartment, because I lost mine to bed bugs in July – not that that could be contributing to my stress or anything.
Unfortunately airports and airplanes and trying to sleep in different time zones are kind of killing me, so I’m canceling personal appearances for the next few weeks. It is a serious bummer, because I love meeting audiences and doing Q and A’s; and also because some of my upcoming lecture gigs actually pay, and I need the money. But my body and brain apparently can’t take this much travel, and I’m really sick.
On a bright note, the Rehovot International Women’s Film Festival was amazing – really excellent films, and excellent women. I also met some wonderful animators from ASIFA-Israel.
Please check the ever-growing show list. Sorry it’s not better organized; you have to scroll down in chronological order from past to future. It’s just me and my Momz trying to keep track here.
I’m leaving on Sunday for these two:
Sita and I will be bopping around other parts of Israel too, according to the US State Department (!), who is sponsoring my trip (how that was arranged I do not know). I’ll be in Athens Sept. 25-29. Whee!
Naturally I keep up on the latest grim developments in copyright law. The new Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, which unsurprisingly “is strongly backed by the music and movie industries,” would “(allow) for the Department of Justice to bring civil suits against IP infringers.”
Continue reading “Am I a Criminal?”