Today is a bold day: for years animator Nina Paley has struggled to get her masterwork Sita Sings the Blues, a retelling of the Ramayana set to Annette Hanshaw's jazz classic, a wider release. Now, she has it.
Through the public television show Reel 13, you, me or anyone else in the world with an internet connection can now watch the entire movie.
Sita is a full-length film, produced by a single artist working on a shoestring budget, on her home computer and backed almost entirely by the film’s enthusiastic audiences around the world (an audience produced movie? Yes. That's something new, isn't it?). Paley and her allies have now overcome considerable hurdles -- including archaic copyright laws put in place to keep exactly this sort of truly independent, eclectic art from standing on its own two feet -- and gotten their movie out there.
She's also announced that she hopes to have the movie available on her website (under a Creative Commons license, naturally) for download around March 7.
Back in November, I interviewed Paley at length about the movie and her fight to get it seen. Under the law, she couldn't even legally give it away for free because the compositions for Hanshaw's music is corporately owned, even though the songs have been in the public domain for years.
But she fought on, and won. Copyright law is multi-faceted enough that she found a rule that was perfect for this situation -- public television doesn't have to pay the exorbitant fees required to use 80+ year old compositions.
And the movie is still absolutely stunning.
So grab something delicious to drink. Get some popcorn. Click. Watch. Enjoy.
And mark the day. Something big just changed.
thanks for the heads up!
watched it on the weekend and was well impressed.
Posted by: m1k3y | March 10, 2009 at 02:18 AM