Sita Sings the Blues is an animated feature length film by Nina Paley, a cartoonist who’s worked on several animated shorts, comics strips, and all comic art alike. I can only start to comment on this film by giving a brief back story: Nina Paley was happily married, her husband moved to India for work and then dumped her by email… Sounds tough? For a cartoonist, sometimes it only makes sense to express your feelings of a traumatic experience through your art. For Nina, it was expressed through a feature length film.

Seemingly theraputic, the animated feature was inspired by the epic tale of Ramayana that she read while her husband was in India.  After the breakup, she saw her own experience reflected in the one told by the tale of Ramayana and she makes it very apparent in the film.  The feature contains several art styles that represents her own story, the story of  Ramayana , and three hilarious shadow puppets that narrate the whole thing.  Not only is the animation done in different visual styles but the film is a musical and Nina manages to mix in sounds and beats of Indian music and the songs of Annette Hanshaw from the 1920’s. An amazing feat, Sita Sings the Blues took several years to make but only an hour and half to keep me in my seat showing me a touching, yet often hilarious work of art from the heart.

I can go on and on about this animated film but I’ll keep tripping over my own words. All I gotta say is that I love it! So go visit Nina’s sites at http://blog.ninapaley.com/ and http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/.   And watch the full feature length film here  http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/blog/watch-sita-sings-the-blues-online/347/