Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues has been well received at film fests by critics and by a diehard group of supporters. When Paley couldn’t secure the music rights for the Annette Hanshaw songs integral to the film’s storytelling, it looked like it may never been seen by a wide audience. The film is now released on DVD this month (Indiepix) and will begin screening at the IFC Center this Friday (Dec. 25-31). Earlier this year Felicia Feaster spoke with Paley about the film, Sita’s “bodacious boobs” and her next project: viral animation shorts about artistic freedom.

Felicia Feaster: Do you support yourself with your cartooning?

Nina Paley: I rely on gifts. I rely on grants, speaking fees, meals bought for me by friends, donations sent over the Internet.

Where are you in terms of distribution of Sita? It has been held up over music rights. Will Sita ever get conventional distribution?

Sita will never get conventional distribution even if everything gets cleared completely. I am pursuing unconventional distribution, which is distribution by the audience.

And is that a philosophical intent you always had or is it something that’s been propelled because of these problems with securing the music rights?

It’s been propelled by these problems securing the music rights but now I realize it’s a much better model than the existing model. So these difficulties have forced me to find another solution and I realize the other solution is much better than what I wanted: Let the audience distribute it.

So you’re making it available online for free for people to download?

That’s one way, yeah. Basically I want to make it as available as possible and I want to rely on the audience to share it. So there should also be DVDs, 35 mm film prints, tapes, screenings, every possible way but rather than me centrally having to control all of this, the audience can do it.

And what was your model for doing it this way?

Free software. Free software has been going for about 20 years and it’s great because everyone helps. And when there’s a mistake, you don’t need some central manager tracking all the mistakes, when people find a mistake they fix it.

So it’s pretty democratic as opposed to the control and ownership issues that come into play with music rights or with distribution.

It’s democratic. It’s actually anarchistic.

Is that something that has guided your life in other ways?

Freedom appeals to me philosophically and of course I had my own taste of why controlling culture through copyright laws is so damaging to art. As an artist it harmed me. It really harmed my film. If I had actually followed the rules I never would have made my film. If I’d gotten so far as making my film I never would have shown my film. That would have been obeying the laws as we have them set up. That’s just not good for culture. Like a lot of artists I don’t do this for money. I need money to support myself: I do need money to live.  But I really made it out of passion because I really wanted this film to exist and the fact that these laws had I not committed the civil disobedience that I did, my film would not have existed. And talking to other filmmakers, there are so many projects that have never come to life because of these laws. It is the first thing filmmakers look at: Do I need permission? Am I infringing on anything? I better not do it.

It’s a pity because it seems like visual artists can get away with more in terms of using material because of freedom of expression and for some reason filmmakers are more bound by these corporate laws and ownership.

Actually, the laws are becoming more draconian for everyone. Are you aware of Shepard Fairey? There’s a situation where, 30 years ago, Andy Warhol had no problem making his stuff. But if Andy Warhol were to try and work today, he would get sued. It’s not clear whether AP is going to win this suit, but just the ideas about copyright have gotten completely out of control. It affects everybody.

Was it cathartic to channel your own feelings over a breakup with your husband into a film and telling Sita’s story? I’m guessing you identified very strongly with her circumstance as a woman scorned by her man.

Yes, it was cathartic. I really wanted to tell the story of Sita as billions of people have, I just wanted the story to pass through me, And I felt like animating it was making little effigies of my own psyche. Letting them enact that drama and work through this drama.

Can you give an example of a place where Sita would have been an effigy of something you were encountering or feeling.

Well, the ending where Sita says “if I’ve always been true to Rama, may Mother Earth take me back into her womb." It’s like by making the film I killed Sita: in other words, she dies.  And so it was sort of a ritual killing of my inner Sita. But of course she lives forever. There is something very Jungian about it.

Killing Sita in terms of her being devoted to death to a man? You had to kill that?

Well, she either dies or ends her mortal life. She goes through this cosmic change. And I was tormented by my own inner Sita: continually longing for my ex. And so by actually having the characters act out the story I felt like I worked through something, especially with that scene.  So I reenacted this whole drama and now Sita is going to die. Sita’s going to die; long live Sita!

I loved the idea of using the three modern Indian narrators as this kind of Greek chorus trying to recount the story of Sita, but misremembering details. It’s a very interesting device about stories and legends as flexible, changeable forms. Tell me what our intention was in telling the story of Ramayana in that way.

That was an experiment. It was a successful experiment and the only credit I can take for it is recognizing a good thing when I heard it. I knew that my film needed something and I was willing to try things and I got these friends of mine into a room and just recorded them and it was great.

Was it inspired by something you’d seen?

It was inspired by all the conversations I’d had with people. That was a very typical conversation that I had.

Your film shows the influence of Max Fleischer, Betty Boop, Disney animation, shadow puppets and your origins are in comics. Tell me about your visual influences.

Well, a lot oft he different styles were references to traditional Ramayana art from different regions and different times.  I have those fake mogul miniature paintings and the shadow puppets which come from Indonesia and also Thailand and even India. And there’s this bit of collage stuff that come from Hindu devotional cards, which are Indian popular art from the 20th century. And then the musical numbers cartoon styles are just a mishmash of animation influences. Other people are actually better at naming the influences than I am because I’m influenced by everything I see, and I can’t really tell you what’s what.

So you don’t have one animation guru? Someone who kind of stands above the others in terms of influencing your own work?

I will say that as a child the Yellow Submarine aired frequently and I know that that influenced me.

To me, Sita is really visually engaging in a way that you could describe as psychedelic. Can you talk about that visual device of that repetitive, hypnotic, circular animation that really gets you in a trance especially that beginning is outrageous.

NP: I’m glad it does. That particular style has a lot to do with working within the limitations of the technology. I used flash and flash has its own language and things that it’s good at, and it’s very good at repetitive motion, so that style kind of emerged in harmony with the medium I was using. Since I animated it all myself, I had to be economical. But I should also say regarding psychedelic stuff ever since I was young and drawing comics, I was inspired by underground comics and I loved psychedelic art. But I am just the most non-drug person. My natural brain chemistry is unbalanced enough so that I’ve never enhanced that experience.

Women definitely get the short end of the romantic stick all around in Sita. I like the way you made a connection between the stories of heartbreak and Twenties blues and then Sita’s tale of woe. Tragic love stories are really just universal seems to be a theme of the film. Tell me though what your thinking was in juxtaposing those two forms: this Indian epic and Twenties blues.

They came to me that way. What happened was, I read my first Ramayana in India and I was really obsessed with the Ramayana at the time I went on this business trip to New York and my husband dumped me by email. So I had Ramayana on the brain. And I was completely immersed in grief. And that was when I heard Annette Hanshaw songs for the first time. I was staying in the home of a record collector and he had old Annette Hanshaw records in his collection and it so it all just went to the same place. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the Ramayana and I couldn’t stop thinking about these songs and it was because they were telling the same story. And of course I couldn’t stop thinking about my own grief so the story kind of told itself that way.

Was it just listening to Annette Hanshaw when you were grieving, or was it something about her voice and lyrics that really captured your imagination?

All of the above. I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard the same things had I not been grieving and I know that the Ramayana would not have been the same to me had I not been grieving. Because I initially read it when I wasn’t grieving and I didn’t get it at all.  So it was actually going through that grief that gave me a different understanding of the epic.

So your film is really a testament to how permeable and influenced by circumstance art is and how art changes over time.

Yeah, and also the profundity of grief. There’s that one segment, possibly my favorite in the whole film that comes a few minutes after the intermission, which uses the Rotoscope style, with the dancing. And that’s the one segment that, actually, isn’t funny—which is unusual for me. And that’s really about the profundity of grief.

Surely grief couldn’t have sustained you for 5 years, the time it took to make this film. There must have been something else driving you.

Actually, I had a lot of grief. At the beginning of the film I was like, when is this paint going to end? It’s never going to end. And I was actually able to harness it. And of course that wasn’t all it was: there is just the sheer magic of making art and the transformation of shit into gold.  That kind of pain is like fire and fire is a reoccurring theme in the film: it can burn you up and it can also fuel you. And I felt like it was going to kill me if I didn’t do something with it. That pain was big enough to keep me going. Not to say I was in pain the whole time. I wasn’t.  I was very happy when I was doing it. But whenever I stopped working on the film it would come back.

One thing I loved about the film was the sexuality of your gods and goddesses is pretty amped up. It seemed to send at least one critic into rapture describing Sita’s “bodacious boobs.” Can you tell me why you decided to draw your characters, especially Sita, as so sexually over the top?

First, I should say that Sita is depicted that way in some scenes, but in other scenes, she has that covered up posture. But I think a lot of that is inspired by the text where she is the most beautiful woman in the world and also from old temple art, pre-mogul Indian art had a kind of sexiness to it. And it’s a pre-mogul story. So I tried to see how far I could take that. How much I could exaggerate it. And if I had exaggerated it any more her hips would have been severed from her chest. And I tried to do the same thing with Rama: the masculine quality of huge broad shoulders and these giant strong arms. And of course he’s described in the story as being incredibly strong and beautiful. They’re both over the top. And of course she’s the ideal woman and he’s the ideal man.

Are you working on anything now beyond getting the movie out into the world, or has that become your consuming passion at this point?

I would say free speech activism is my consuming passion at this point and getting the film out for free. It turns out to be the most effective activism that I can do. But I’m also hoping to make some short viral cartoons about free speech issues.