Sita Sings The Blues

Sita Sings The Blues was a strange experience for me because Nina Paley utilized a lot of stylistic elements I had been considering using for my next long-in-coming video. Annette Hanshaw recordings (I was looking for public domain music) Flash animation (I use Director 7) and lots of salvage imagery. It all comes together beautifully, and in her attempts to get copyright clearance, she became a fighter for free culture and as a result offers her film for free download at the official site. It's pretty wonderful, and beautiful and shows a great appreciation of the vibrance of Indian Culture

TRAILER:

ENTIRE MOVIE:

And oh yeah, my Mom used to sing a lot of those Annette Hanshaw tunes.

Debra Paget's First Dance for Fritz Lang

Two years ago or so Debra Paget's dance from Das Indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb) was on a bunch of sites owing to her "artificially nude" appearance juxtaposed over Fritz Lang's exotic and tense mise en scene. It looked cool. This clip:



is not dissimilar and it's from the first film of his Indian Epic Trilogy - Der Tiger Von Eschnapur. The set is pretty spectacular as is Paget's gusto towards getting the performance maximized. A great lepers-that-look-like-zombies scene shortly follows in the film.