keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

"What we have now is you can get paid for craft. You don’t get paid for art. You get paid for craft . Every animator that I know, or almost every animator that I know, works at a studio, working on shit. They know it’s shit. They do their best to not think about it, but it’s god-awful commercial shit. Which is not to say that commercial stuff is bad, I’m not anti-commerce. But it’s devised by some idiot, it’s lowest common denominator, and this is what really talented people do. They do crap work. And it’s not just in animation; it’s at all levels." The above quote comes from an interview ( part 1 , part 2 ) with Nina Paley that covers her personal history and issues revolving around copyright. It's part of a larger roundtable discussion on copyright that can be found here and includes composer Jonathan Newman (who rebuts Paley) and an attorney who summarizes the history of copyright.

Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues is the kind of film that a major studio would never make, and that's exactly why it's so valuable. On the face of it, a film that combines at least four different design styles, Indian mythology, a commentary on that mythology, 1920s jazz, and autobiography is a commercial train wreck. No one in Hollywood would ever give this a green light or even invest in developing it. That's because in a studio setting, the large number of people involved threaten to pull a film apart. Studios seize on the generic because it's the only thing that everyone can agree on; idiosyncracy rarely survives the Hollywood process. The jumble of elements that make up Sita work because they're all from the mind and hand of one person: Nina Paley. The story is inspired by her own experience of being dumped by a boyfriend, and the parallel mythological story reflects the misfortune that men often judge women by mysterious or impossible standards. T...

Nancy Beiman and Michael Sporn have posted that the complete Sita Sings the Blues can be watched online at the WNET site. I don't know how long this will be available and since there are still unresolved copyright issues, this film may never be released theatrically or on DVD. Watch it while you can.

The N.Y. Times is reporting that Nina Paley's animated feature Sita Sings the Blues will air on the New York PBS station WNET on March 7. It also reports that the copyright fees for the songs have been negotiated to a more reasonable level and that the film may soon be released more widely. I'm looking forward to seeing the complete film.