If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching Sita Sings the Blues, then I recommend it highly. It is animated as beautifully as 10,000 lotuses.
More importantly, it is being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license by Nina Paley, who directed, wrote, produced, designed and animated it. She’s even gone into considerable debt to cover the licensing fees so that the movie can be made available, so don’t forget to swing by the film’s Dontate page.
The story itself is a mashup of a modern drama and the Ramayana. Here’s the synopsis:
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”