So an artist named Nina Paley created a full length animated film called "Sita Sings the Blues" telling the Indian tale of Ramayana (as well as a bit from Paley's own love life), incorporating the recordings of 1920's singer Annette Hanshaw. I found the film to be laugh-out-loud funny, and Roger Ebert likewise sings its praises (http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/having_wonderful_time_wish_you.html), but the film will never be released commercially because, while the recordings of Annette Hanshaw are all public domain, most of the compositions of the songs are owned by major corporations who want hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow a distributor the rights to them.

This is definitely a tiny, independent art-film, so no distributor was going to materialize and cough up that kind of dough. As of today, Nina Paley has given the film to the public (http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/). Says Paley: "Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes."

I admit, I hadn't heard of this movie at all until seeing an article on it earlier this morning. I began watching a bit out of curiosity and then found myself watching all 80 or so minutes of it. I thought some people here might get a kick out of it as well.

Here's the trailer:



Here's one of the musical numbers:



And here is the entire film:
http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/blog/watch-sita-sings-the-blues-online/347/