Sing my Song Sita

I’ve just come back from one of those movie experiences that are so good you have to share it with others. So here goes: The Natfilm festival is in Copenhagen is screening Sita Sings the Blues – a cartoon by Nina Paley. Now I knew nothing about this film or about Nina Paley, when I went to Empire bio this afternoon. I sort of have a tradition with a few of my friends that every year at Natfilm we see one or two of the Indian Bollywood musicals the festival is showing. This time there was a cartoon bollywood musical or so we thought, not having really read the programme properly, but just decided that a change from Amir Khan this year would be nice.

Sita Sings the Blues turned out to be a sweetly told story of the Ramayan focusing on Sita. With parallels to the cartoonist own unhappy love life in the US and India including a break up over email, Sita comes alive through different styles of drawing and the singing voices of 1920s blues singer Annette Hanshaw. The trials and rejections which Sita goes through are told by tree really funny shadow puppets in an entertaining and delightful bollywood like setting. I really recommend this film to anyone!