One of Karina Longworth’s favorite undistributed films of last year is available to watch for free on Reel 13. Sita Sings the Blues won the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award at the 2008 Gotham Awards. In Karina’s review from Tribeca 2008, she called it, “a strange and beautiful little film, a potentially wispy slice of autobiography smartly elevated through irresistible, orgiastic style.”
Watch the movie and read Brandon Harris’ interview with director Nina Paley from last November (republished) after the jump.
Originally published on 11/17/08 as SITA SINGS THE BLUES Director Nina Paley: The Media Diet by Brandon Harris
For fans of relatively offbeat animation, 2008 seems to have been a banner year. Pixar produced perhaps their most acclaimed effort yet with Wall-E, which is drawing considerable heat for a best picture nomination. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir thrilled and horrified audiences in Competition in Cannes with subject matter and personal introspection not usually broached by animated films. Yet the most satisfying animated film that surfaced in 2008 may well have been Nina Paley’s delightful Sita Sings The Blues, which marries the tunes of obscure 30’s blues songstress Annette Hanshaw to a retelling, by three hip, Gen-Y Indians, of the Indian myth Ramayana and a mildly autobiographical story of a Seattle-based female cartoonist loosing her husband to his job in India. The film, a nominee for this year’s Gotham Award for the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You after an impressive festival run that began at this year’s Berlinale, screens at MoMA on Thursday and Saturday. Clearly a dedicated postmodernist, Paley discusses Sci-Fi channel’s Eureka, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and the strange ambiguities of influence.
What films or television shows have you seen recently?
Whatever they had on the airplane. It was Virgin, and they charged $7.99 for movies, so I stuck with the free TV channels (I don’t have TV at home). The SciFi channel was showing a commercial-free marathon of Eureka which I had never even heard of before, but it was pretty good plane fare. Also some other station was playing Spiderman, but with tons of commercial breaks which made it kind of tedious to watch.
Which ones stuck with you and why?
Eureka because I saw like 5 episodes, without commercials.
Does your interest in them have anything to do with your own work as an animator?
Not in any way I can identify consciously, but I’m sure it does somehow.
How do the films that you think of as “influences” affect your own style and preoccupations as a animator, if at all?
So many people have asked “what are your influences” over the years. I now conclude my answer is: EVERYTHING. Everything I see, even if it’s just out the corner of my eye, is an influence.
I’m one of those crazy free culture people who insist there are no original ideas; all creativity builds on what has come before. As an artist I pull stuff out of the hive mind, the culture that’s all around me. I’m so saturated in culture I can’t separate influences out, or keep track of each discreet one. Just as corals build complex structures from the calcium floating in the ocean around them, artists pull ideas and influences from the sea of culture, and organize them in ways that suit us.
How often do you read fiction? Do you wish you read more?
I read a lot. I prefer reading to watching TV. I also read nonfiction.
What would be your ideal literary adaptation and why?
Hmm. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig would make a good movie, because people need to discuss this stuff and most can’t be persuaded to read a book.
How, if at all, has reading informed your animation?
It gives my mind an escape, something to do in “foreground” while my subconscious is solving problems in “background.” And it enriches me as a human being. My work is an expression of my whole being, so anything that touches me will in some way touch my art too.
What are you listening to recently?
I’m currently staying at a friend’s house in Oakland (I’m in town for the San Francisco Animation Festival). My hosts are cleaning up the kitchen right now, playing something on their boom box. I have no idea what it is, but I know I’m absorbing it and if I ever hear it again, it’ll sound familiar.
I almost never sit down and consciously listen to music. But just walking around, I hear tons. Stores and restaurants pipe in music, people play it in subways and on the street, it’s on people’s cell phone ringtones, it blasts from the windows of passing cars, it’s in the background everywhere. I can’t close my ears. I may only hear snippets at a time but it sticks in my mind, somewhere, adding to all the other influences in
there.
I enjoy quiet. In silence I can play back all the junk my mind has collected, and really listen to it. I have a lifetime of music playing in my head constantly. The DJ is my id, or subconscious, or maybe God.
Since I typed all that, my host’s soundtrack has turned to the Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime.” I’ve never owned a Talking Heads record, and don’t have an MP3 collection, but I know that song, and countless others.
If you could collaborate with one musician on one of your own films, whom would it be and why?
That would depend on the story, the idea behind the piece, and a lot of other factors. Right now I’m looking for a 30-second ditty on the theme of “copying isn’t theft.” Anyone have one or want to write one?
If there were such a thing as an “animated concert film”, who would be the best subject?
Live, from the Inside of Nina’s Head: God the DJ! That’s one long concert though.
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog » Paul Moore