Sita Sings the Blues

(Past) Sun, Jan 31 at 5:30 pm (Past) Sun, Feb 7 at 5:30 pm (Past) Sun, Feb 14 at 1 pm and 5:30 pm Leonard Nimoy Thalia $11; Members $7; Seniors $9 Get two tickets per screening for an entire year for just $100 with a Thalia Film Pass!

2007. Nina Paley. USA. 82 min. Color

Berlin International Film Festival: Crystal Bear

Denver International Film Festival: Emerging Filmmaker Award

San Francisco Film Critics Circle: Special Citation

"Critics Pick! A Tour de Force! Dazzling! Affecting, surprising and a lot of fun." - AO Scott, New York Times

"Four Stars! Universal and Completely Unique!" - David Fear, Time Out New York

"I am enchanted. I am swept away. I am smiling from one end of the film to the other. It brings together four entirely separate elements and combines them into a great whimsical chord. A miracle!" – Roger Ebert

Tragedy, comedy and musical collide in this gloriously animated film from New York’s own "One Woman Pixar" (Wired). 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 bickering shadow puppets act as comic narrators as these old and new stories are interwoven in a post-modern retelling of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, animated in a dazzling mix of traditional and collage animation styles. Sita Sings the Blues follows in the line of Triplets of Bellville and Spirited Away to exemplify animation as a "serious" art form -- which does not stop it from being laugh-out-loud funny! A panoply of monsters, gods, goddesses, warriors, sages, and winged eyeballs fill the screen with vivid color from start to finish, while the narrators’ improvisational debates over the Rama legend join the filmmaker’s own tragicomic story to layer a modern feminist commentary on the ancient tale. The result is a subtly subversive, visually stunning, highly original work that is as enjoyable for children as it is for adults.

Q&A with the director following each screening!!

While you watch the film, enjoy a glass of wine and a light snack in the intimate cabaret atmosphere of the Leonard Nimoy Thalia