Sita Sings The BluesBy Nina Paley

Last night I sat down in front of ol’ man laptop in search of audio-visual entertainment and feasted my peepers (jeepers!) on something beautiful.  This beauty came by the name of Sita Sings The Blues.  Okay where to begin… there’s just too much cool going on here.  Everyone, breathe. Find your calm place and we are ready to begin.

Sita Sings the Blues takes us through what the poster dubs as the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.  I’m inclined to agree.  Artist, animator and director (WHAT?!) Nina Paley gives us an animated re-telling of the Ramayana, an ancient Hindu tale of love, trust, betrayal, justice and… well it covers a lot of allegorical ground.  To boil it down you have the beautiful Sita and the trials she experiences with her main squeeze Rama.

Now this on its own would make for a stellar watch (like with your eyes, not the time keeper) but the awesome keeps on coming.  First off Sita expresses her emotional state through dirty thirties era blues songs.  And through some alternating animation styles, as well as references to contemporary relationships you have here a story designed specifically to amaze.

Now I am just about to wrap this post up but there’s one last thing. IT’S ULTRA-FREE! I say ultra because this feature length film is not only offered for free download in numerous formats but it is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.  This basically translates into a do-whatever-you-want-with-it license.  Share, distribute, profit-from, remix and… well anything.  Checkout the official site to read Nina Paley’s thoughtful post on her reasoning behind this choice.  This also got me learning about the Free Culture movement, but that’s for another post.