“Sita Sings the Blues”: emails & anciens dieux / emails & ancient gods

2 avril 2009

Téléchargez ce long métrage ici en HD/ Download this animated movie here in HD:

http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/blog/watch-sita-sings-the-blues-online/347/

ou regardez le ici / or watch it here:

Sous-titres français:

http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/wiki/index.php?title=Subtitles

Sita Sings the Blues

http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/

Réalisé, écrit, produit, conçu et animé par

Directed, written, produced, designed and animated by

Nina Paley

82 minutes

Animation

Color, stereo

Digital Cinema Package, HDCAM, DVD;

soon on 35mm

2008

Voici le synopsis officiel. Rien que ça. Pas vraiment modeste l’artiste.

Mon génie est pourtant bien plus grand !

Here’s the official synopsis. The artist is not very modest!

Really, everybody knows that there’s only one genius here: me!

Sita est une déesse séparée de son cher prince et mari Rama. Nina est une animatrice dont le mari déménage en Inde, puis qui la quitte par email. Trois marionnettes hilarantes racontent à la fois cette ancienne tragédie et cette comédie moderne dans une interprétation magnifique de l’épopée indienne Ramayana. Sita Sings the Blues sur des chansons jazz des années 20 interprêtées par Annette Hanshaw, peut être considéré comme “la plus grande histoire de rupture jamais racontée”

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920′s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

Publié dans Dessins animés

7 réponses à to ““Sita Sings the Blues”: emails & anciens dieux / emails & ancient gods”

Melinda :

3 avril 2009 à 10:16

Very interesting post, LaMirabelle! I enjoyed it.

Melinda
mirabelle :

4 avril 2009 à 10:12

Sita sings the blues, women join chorus

15 Mar 2009, 0210 hrs IST, Meenakshi Kumar, TNN

In a recent American animation film, ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, a buxom Sita refuses to return to earth when her fidelity is questioned. Instead, she leaves Rama to join a progressive agricultural collective.

Back home, folktales and regional literature abound with numerous interpretations of Valmiki’s mythical heroine. Indian feminist writing in English too, have found a role model in Sita. Indian women have always tried to reclaim Sita. As have others, not least Nina Paley, who directed the critically acclaimed film and brought Sita to an international forum.

Writer Shashi Deshpande says Sita has never been forgotten, “her tragedy continues to haunt women and that’s how she has remained with us always”. One of Deshpande’s stories portrays Sita as a woman desperately seeking a normal relationship with a man.

Paley attests to Sita’s continuing relevance today. She writes on her website that she, a dumped wife, was able to find a parallel between her own life and that of Sita. “In fact, as time went on, my life began increasingly to resemble Sita’s. I desperately tried to move on emotionally, but I couldn’t get over my husband.

“Why was my heart devoted to him, when he’d treated me so badly? My husband’s peculiar behavior resembled Rama’s: no violent explosions, just mysterious emotional implosions. Why had he frozen up? Why had he rejected me, when I loved him so much?…”

Mythologist Devdutt Patnaik believes that Sita’s undying love for her husband makes her relevance endure. “Everyone in the world is seeking for perfection in conjugal love. Sita embodies that and so, her appeal is universal,” he says.

Perhaps this is why Hema Ramakrishna chose to have Sita jump nto Ravana’s funeral pyre in her play ‘Sanctuary’ because “where else could she have gone after she is rejected by Ram?”

She says, “The significance stems from a realistic assessment of her situation, instead of the stereotype of chaste wife who is not even touched by Ravana’s hands”.

Sita’s image as the chaste, loyal, suffering wife has been perpetuated in religious tracts, literature, politics and society. Feminists criticize the patriarchal mindset that spread this stereotype, delineating Sita as a role model for women. But some writers argue that there is no ‘real’ Sita. That’s why she is open to reinterpretation – with women trying to imagine her in disparate scenarios. Deshpande says, “this makes her a figure of great value.”

At the same time, she becomes a convenient tool, to be used to serve a purpose. “For the Hindu Right, she represents a return to a glorious past while feminists use her to question patriarchy,” points out Ritu Menon, one of India’s first feminist publishers.

Over the years, there has been a major change in the general perception of Sita, with the ‘real’ woman perhaps lost somewhere in translation, transliteration, interpretation and reinterpration. Gail Omvedt, an American social activist living in India, believes that to some extent the “aggressive Hindutva destroyed a more equalitarian ‘Hindu’ tradition.”

Omvedt says Sita has not been given her due, in contrast to her husband, who is worshipped across India over. No major temple is dedicated to her; just a couple of insignificant ones in Maharashtra. Even, the Hindi heartland’s traditional greeting of ‘Jai Siya Ram’ has been corrupted to ‘Jai Shri Ram’.

Does this mean that Sita is slowly being forgotten? Not at all, say experts. Ramakrishna says, “In this day and age of feminist perceptions of what is right and wrong, people around the world will connect to her situation and buzz around her story like so many angry bees”.

Perhaps, so long as love and rejection don’t go out of fashion, Sita will continue to sing her blues, both at home and across borders.
lamirabelle:

31 octobre 2010 à 15:55

Nina Paley, author:
“Dear Audience,
I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.”

See: http://www.sitasingstheblues.com
lamirabelle:

31 octobre 2010 à 15:58

You can still buy the DVD with a Director’s Commentary track, the Trailer, an interview with Nina by WNET of New York City, the bonus short “Fetch!”, some subtitles, and more : http://questioncopyright.com/dvds.html
lamirabelle:

10 novembre 2010 à 09:37

Check out Nina Paley’s opinion on Creative Commons here: City of industry : Creative Commons sous les palmiers
alexa008:

11 octobre 2011 à 04:56

when i started doing yoga six months ago…i have been interested to India. i like the video too!
alexa008 recently posted..Laundry Detergent Coupons
Lacey.:

18 janvier 2012 à 08:15

You definitely know how to keep a reader amused. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Excellent job. I really enjoyed what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!