Saturday was the longest day of WFAC, though we only ended up attending three screenings. I think I’m starting to learn my limit for watching films in a theater now, especially a theater with uncomfortable seating. We had to make some tough choices in terms of what to attend, which comprise the best and worst films of the festival.

Screening: Donkey Xote
Since Donkey Xote was produced by the same production studio that made Nocturna, we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss it after the fantastic screening on Friday night.

We should have just slept in.

Donkey Xote is a fanciful retelling of the Don Quixote story (get it?), where Sancho’s donkey tells us how the story actually happened. Alas, the title is the funniest thing about the film. Virtually every other joke falls flat, which makes for a pretty painstaking 90 minutes. While the 3d animation was made with some craft (a few of the backdrops look particularly snazzy), it’s about five steps behind Hollywood family animation in every category.

This actually brings up a few important things about the festival. As small, independent, or international animators, the creators of these films don’t have the money to compete directly with Hollywood at its own game: creating safe juggernauts of entertainment with near-universal appeal. By breaking with the conventions and offering something different and unique, many of the films at the festival have proven that it’s worth looking beyond those borders for something special.

With Donkey Xote, though, Filmax has decided to go toe-to-toe with the Hollywood studios in the international market. They have created a film with a similar look, a similar storytelling style, talking animals, a painfully predictable story, and an only slightly Spanish flair. It plays much like one of our animated films, but with less talent involved. Their voice actors aren’t as strong, and their animation department isn’t able to create content on the same scale.

In truth, I’m not sure why this film was selected for WFAC. While I’d hesitate to ask them, I can’t help but wonder if Filmax pushed the festival into taking two of their films in order to get permission to screen Nocturna. Either way, we left the theater pretty disappointed after this one.

Screening: Sita Sings the Blues
We arrived back in early evening to find a slightly larger crowd, and sat down to the independently produced Sita Sings the Blues. It was produced, written, and animated by American Nina Paley, and it took her almost six years to create.

Paley started working on this project shortly after she was abandoned by her husband. Around the same time, she happened to be reading the Ramayana. It tells the tale of a goddess named Sita, who is faithful to her husband yet abandoned over foolish suspicion. Nina saw a number of parallels between these two stories, and decided to exorcise her own heartbreak through this production, which alternates rapidly between humor, pathos, and the least heightened mythology ever told. It’s also a musical, borrowing the voice of little-known 20s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw to supply a deeply ironic soundtrack.

Sita Sings the Blues is the best animated film of 2008, and easily one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.

But you can’t see it.

Not only will this film not gain a nomination for best animated film this year (which isn’t that surprising), it isn’t even eligible to win one.

You see, Sita Sings the Blues is currently trapped in the seemingly endless black hole of rights hell, and we are all going to suffer as a result. Based somehow on the way Paley inserted the Annette Hanshaw songs (despite the fact that they are over 70 years old and were never renewed) means that she owes a monstrously huge number of rights to the music companies that once owned the rights to the music. She can’t find a distributor until she pays off these rights, and she can’t pay off the rights until she finds a distributor. Keep in mind, this whole issue comes from songs that were already in the public domain. At any rate, it has almost bankrupted Paley to deliver this film to festivals, and she’s almost at the point where she would just be willing to give the damn thing away, if she could just afford to.

Now, Paley is taking a break from being an artist in order to fight America’s draconian and damaging copyright laws, which defend cold, heartless corporations from talented passionate artists. I am going to join her on her soapbox, because I’m outraged that this has happened to such an astonishing film. The big fuss is over synch rights, which the corporations are somehow able to grip onto long after regular copyright expires. In other words, had Paley simply inserted the music into the background of her film, she wouldn’t be in trouble. Since it is a musical, though, the synch rights still apply, and she suddenly owes a ludicrous amount of money to several corporations. Please believe me when I say that I support companies and their attempts to be profitable with their properties. It’s ridiculous, though, that over twenty years after Hanshaw’s death (at the ripe old age of 84), that her music couldn’t be used in this way. I have a sinking suspicion that these companies would obtain and enforce the legal rights to Mozart’s music if they had any legal way to do it. The greed of these corporations suppresses the work of talented artists who work well within their own rights for creation.

All right, I’ll climb off the soapbox now, and talk about the film itself. Paley does a brilliant job of combining several styles of animation in Sita Sings the Blues, each perfectly representing and setting apart that component of the film. Her own experiences are put down in a messy compilation of flat cel animation and moving still images, which gives it a contemporary and personal feel. The musical numbers are created in a highly stylized flat geometric animation, which makes Sita seem almost like an ancient colorful Indian Betty Boop–perfect for the ’20s jazz it accompanies. The storytelling portions are drawn with a combination of shadow puppet narrators along with moving cutouts to tell the story, which flawlessly connects the timelessness of the story to the contemporary approach.

Indeed, the whole film is a fascinating study of myth and storytelling. It approaches myth from a female perspective, willing to challenge the objectivity of the these stories that have been told for centuries. It also questions the general stability of those stories, dealing with a number of interpretations and variations of the stories that have come through in past centuries. The myth of Sita itself is both timeless and a cultural product, and Sita Sings the Blues does justice to both of those sides of the story. By placing it next to her own experience, it also humanizes these mythic characters, and presents her own pain in a rich historical context. Paley is not the first to go through such heartbreak, and will not be the last. Even at her most angry, though, she remains fair to the men in the myth as well. Neither Rama nor the evil king are presented as monsters, but instead are portrayed as men who do monstrous things. It’s a much better approach.

It’s also wickedly funny. The banter of the shadow puppets shows more wit and charm than any dialogue I’ve heard in recent memory, and the irony in the music creates a number of laughs. The audacity of Paley’s visuals are also a wonder to behold, and the colors burst from the screen almost faster than we are able to process them as an audience. I know I missed enough in one viewing that I could easily watch it several more times, just to catch the subtleties that I missed this time around.

Alas, I don’t know when that will happen. I am also struck by the disappointment of Paley’s rights struggles. This is a film I want to share with everyone I know, but I have to accept that not only is that unlikely for the foreseeable future, but also that I was lucky enough to get a chance to see it at all–I owe a great debt to Paley for fighting hard against overwhelming bankruptcy and the festival co-ordinators for risking legal action by showing this film at WFAC. I sincerely hope that some of you have a chance to see this remarkable film, perhaps at similar screenings that fly in the face of the unjust system. One thing I do know: it will be a very good day if this film manages to find a distributor, and Sita Sings the Blues is able to find a wider audience. It certainly deserves it.

That’s all.

Screening: Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone
Not only does it have the most complex title in anime history, but Evangelion 1.0 was also the most anticipated screening of the festival. Most anime fans are already plenty familiar with Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the most famous and well-respected of anime franchises. This new film is the first in a series that is recreating that series for the big screen, keeping true to the original but enhancing some of the concepts as well as the animation. It’s a dangerous thing to mess with such a favorite title, and it has been quite controversial since its first release in Japan. So, how does it play?

As it turns out, Evangelion 1.0 is exactly what we’ve come to expect from decades of giant-robot animes. It has several incredible action set pieces, and the spaces in between are filled to the brim with fan service, cutesy side plots, teenage angst, sexual misunderstandings, and more teenage angst. Let the nerdiness begin!

For the most part, Evangelion 1.0 is a serviceable entry into the genre. This is particularly true of the visuals, which are some of the best ever from the Gainax studio. The fights are especially stunning, expanding exponentially on the scale and excitement from the original series. On the big screen, it’s possible to feel the impact of every explosion as entire cities are leveled to the ground: exactly what you want from this kind of film.

Alas, the rest of the film doesn’t hold up as well. While I have only watched a few episodes of the original series, this film seems to follow its structure quite closely. Many of the scenes are virtually identical, making this an exciting but hardly necessary remake for fans. The sequences between the action are pretty tough to slog through as well, thanks to Shinji’s ridiculous stream of whiny voiceover. He complains constantly about being chosen to fight, then fights anyway. Then, he complains that he needed to fight. It’s like the first two Harry Potter movies amplified by a factor of ten.

Finally, for those who have not already seen the original series, the ending is pretty frustrating. A cliffhanger ending is one thing, but introducing a new character in the last ten seconds of a film is hitting below the belt. All around me, there was a knowing murmur from the fans, but my wife and I just looked at each other with bland disappointment as we filed out of the theater.

Seen in the larger context of the installments yet to come, Evangelion 1.0 will probably be a lot more appealing. As Shinji grows, he will become a more engaging character, and the mythology of the Angels and Evas will be filled out for the handful of viewers that haven’t already seen the original series. As far as the fans are concerned, they certainly seemed happy by what they got here. Unquestionably, it is a great example of the kind of animation that benefits from projection in 35mm. Those fights were totally awesome on the big screen.