"Sita Sings The Blues" Film Screens Friday Night

An astonishingly intricate, eclectic and soulful piece of art, "Sita Sings the Blues" is at once the retelling of the epic Hindu poem The Ramayana from a feminist perspective, an ode to the loss of love and a tour de force of animation that celebrates the mix of Western influences on a traditional Indian story.

How is that possible, you ask?

The answer is not simple. Nina Paley was spurred into action to create "Sita Sings the Blues" after getting an email message from her husband letting her know that she shouldn't come back to him (where he was living in India for a job) after she took a break to go home to the U.S.

She couldn't return home to San Francisco where the couple had been living previously, so she spent time in New York City instead with friends. Along the way, she came across a copy of The Ramayana and became absorbed in the story of Sita, a woman who is loyal in her love to Rama yet is treated poorly by him. In the same time period, Paley also discovered the songs and lyrics of Annette Hanshaw -- romantic and wistful jazz melodies of longing for times past.

Merging the two influences together in a creative way seemed like a way for Paley to work through her grief. An animator, Paley's instinct was to start work on a film that retold The Ramayana which used Hanshaw's music as an integral part of the soundtrack.

"I was driven by madness and obsession," Paley said, laughing over the phone while waiting in a Boston train station earlier this week. The film largely concluded a 2-year tour on the festival circuit in 2009, but Paley is still called upon to speak to audiences about her experience making the film, along with Creative Commons and copyright issues.

"I just watched it last night and it isn't something that I could do right now," she said, referring to the single-minded dedication needed to pull off a complex, feature-length animated film.

"I was so driven to tell this story that I found any means to do so," Paley said.

She worked on the film for five years with freelance work spread throughout, which she said could be translated into working "three years solid" on the project.

Since releasing the reimagined tale of The Ramayana from Sita's perspective, Paley says she has received a scolding from some traditionalists, along with a petition dedicated to banning the film. There's been death threats, too.

But Paley didn't seem too bothered by the criticism.

"It's a tiny handful of people," she said, "compared to all the other people who have seen the film. My challenge is not to react at all," she said.

"The vast majority of Hindus like the film," she added.

Joe Devlin, a founding Board Member of the Coastside Film Society, said that he has "loved" the film since it came out. "I love layered work that can offer different things to different people," he said.  "Great music, great animation, a cacophony of styles that are all blended into a single seamless story line."

"Romance, music both familiar and exotic, battle scenes little boys could love," Devlin said, "there's something for everyone."

Karl Cohen, a professor of film at S.F. State University and an avid animation collector and historical expert, will introduce the film to the audience on Friday evening before it screens in Half Moon Bay.

"Nina Paley created a masterpiece working with a tiny budget and very little help, something Hollywood rarely does despite their having large staffs and enormous budgets," Cohen said.

Surprisingly, Paley said the amount of work it took to get the film out in the world was just as much work as making the film itself, when she had to iron out copyright issues to Hanshaw's lyrics.

After a legal battle, Paley decided to release "Sita Sings the Blues" as a Creative Commons Sharealike license that allows anyone to take any elements of the film and remix it in other works.

"Everything I do now is free," Paley said. She says that that she can live off donations that "Sita" generates. That's no small feat for someone who makes her home in Manhattan.

"The freer it is, the more people share it...it's totally decentralized. I have no way of tracking who's seeing the film, as people share it with each other," she said.

Though she has a DVD of "Sita" for sale on her website, Paley says that she doesn't ask that people buy her film (it is available for viewing in installments on You Tube).

What's she up to nowadays in the creative realm?

"My daily online comic strip Mimi and Eunice," she said. "I've also taken up quilting," she added. "I just started that four months ago. It's cool and humbling and scary at the same time."

See "Sita Sings the Blues," organized by the Coastside Film Society on Friday night at 7:30 p.m., at the 's Methodist Sanctuary at 777 Miramontes St. in Half Moon Bay. Tickets are available at the door for $8.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

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