Sita Sings the Blues (2008): watch the full film free, legally

Two tales shaped around the Ramayana

Sita Sings the Blues is a 2008 American independent animated musical romantic comedy-drama written, directed, produced and animated by Nina Paley. Its structure places events from the Ramayana alongside scenes from Paley's own life, treating the ancient mythological material and the modern biographical material as parallel stories with numerous shared themes.

The film also makes room for three Indian shadow puppets, who discuss historical background in a light-hearted but knowledgeable manner. Their conversation sits beside the mythological action, the autobiographical scenes and musical interludes, bringing together several distinct modes rather than following a single continuous narrative line.

Sanjiv Jhaveri voices Dave as well as Dasharatha, Ravana, Dhobi and Valmiki, while Paley voices Nina. Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally and Manish Acharya play Shadow Puppets 1, 2 and 3, identified respectively as Hanuman, Sita and Rama. Deepti Gupta voices Kaikeyi, Debargo Sanyal voices Rama, and Reena Shah provides Sita's speaking voice. Annette Hanshaw supplies Sita's singing voice through archived recordings. Pooja Kumar plays Shurpanakha; Alaudin Ullah plays Maricha and Hanuman; and Nitya Vidyasagar plays Lava and Kusha.

Sita's songs in vector animation

Episodes from the Ramayana are set to songs performed by jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, with Sita visualized as the singing performer. These passages use vector graphic animation, a strikingly modern approach that contrasts with the rustic quality of the older recordings. Digital animation software gives the images a slick, bold appearance and permits close synchronization with Hanshaw's vocals.

Smooth, repetitive side-scrolling movement helps separate the musical episodes from the more consistent narrative plot. Much of the production was completed by Paley using 2D computer graphics and Flash Animation. Jake Friedman supported the work on the "Battle of Lanka" scene.

Beyond the Hanshaw recordings, music came from Rohan, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Nik Phelps, Todd Michaelsen and Reena Shah of My Pet Dragon, plus Pierre-Jean Duffour of Masaladosa. Shah also choreographed and performed dance sequences that Paley rotoscoped for the animation. A digital soundtrack album followed in 2009, combining original music composed by Michaelsen with the jazz standards. Paley estimated that she spent 9,360 hours making the film. She calculated that 6,240 people would need to see its 1.5-hour running time for an "attention profit."

Rights disputes and critical response

The film uses several Hanshaw recordings from the 1920s. Though Paley initially established that the recordings were not covered by federal copyright law, other issues arose involving state laws predating federal recording law, composition rights and synchronization rights. The recordings had protections under state commerce and business laws and were not truly public domain. Copyright holders originally sought about $220,000, but a $50,000 fee was eventually negotiated. Paley took out a loan to license the music in early 2009.

In July 2011, Paley made a protest video after the film was deleted from YouTube in Germany over what she regarded as a fraudulent take-down notice under GEMA. On January 18, 2013, she changed the film's Creative Commons license from CC-BY-SA to CC-0, citing continued rights-procurement red tape. The CLASSICS Act of 2018 scheduled the Hanshaw recordings used in the film to enter the public domain by 2030; the songs' compositions entered the public domain on January 1, 2025.

Rotten Tomatoes reported positive reviews from all 32 critics counted, with an 8.6/10 average, while Metacritic listed a score of 93 from 11 reviews. Roger Ebert wrote that he was "enchanted" and called the film "astonishingly original." The New York Times praised its ingenuity and Paley's 2D animation. The Hollywood Reporter called it charming while suggesting it would probably appeal more to adults than children. Sepia Mutiny noted the highly stylized characters and said Paley remained reasonably faithful to the original story. Paley could not submit the film for Academy Award consideration because it did not meet the requirement for a one-week commercial run.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “Sita Sings the Blues”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.