Back in December Roger Ebert raved on his blog about an obscure movie called Sita Sings the Blues on his blog. The movie is described as "An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw". Reading Ebert's description I decided I had to see this film. But the article ends on a sad note: "the songs Annette Hanshaw sings (composed and recorded in the 1920s!)
in the film are still restricted by copyright, and therefore no one is
free to distribute a film that uses them, no matter how brilliant the
film may be."
Then yesterday an event turned up in the upcoming RSS feed for Brighton: the local Flash programmers group are showing the movie. It turns out the rights issues have been resolved and the film is now available for free download.
I don't yet know if the film is as good as promised but I'm excited to see the Internet is working as it should be. You read about an odd, obscure film, then a locally organised group put on a showing. No marketing or advertising required, just a couple of appropriate RSS feeds.
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