Since my earlier post about the distribution woes of Nina Paley’s animated marvel Sita Sings the Blues, a New York Times article outlines the newest developments.

The rights fees for the music have been negotiated down to a somewhat more manageable $50,000 (versus the $200,000+ reported earlier.) Even so, Paley still intends to release the movie as public domain via the internet, and let the public become her distributor. (In her blog, Paley is looking for people willing to donate server space—about 10GB of data—to host the movie for public download. She also wishes to have an uncompressed, theatre-quality version available somewhere, but that would require up to 600GB server space, so she’s still looking.)

As well, because of an exception in US copyright laws, PBS is allowed to broadcast music without having to clear individual licences, so the New York PBS station WNET is showing Sita on March 7. After this date the movie will be available on the station’s website.

In the meantime, here’s an 11-minute clip of the movie (via Cartoon Brew), which makes me terrifically excited to see the whole thing!