The Easter/Passover season is a perfect time to watch Nina Paley's extraordinary animated feminist musical, "Seder-Masochism."
Accustomed to working outside the mainstream movie industry, Paley has made Seder-Masochism a one-woman project: she wrote, directed, and animated it herself on a total budget of $20,000. It loosely follows the Passover Seder story, with events from the Book of Exodus retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus and the director's father. The film puts a twist on the traditional Biblical story by including a female deity perspective - the Goddess in a tragic struggle against the forces of patriarchy.
Paley has released her films into the public domain, which is the latest effort she has undertaken to advocate for Free Culture. In 2008, while navigating copyright for Sita Sings the Blues, she joined the nonprofit QuestionCopyright.org as artist-in-residence, where she later created a series of shorts about Free Culture called Minute Memes. She has spoken extensively about copy restrictions and art, including her 2015 TEDx talk "Copyright is Brain Damage".
Her books related to the film "Seder-Masochism" are available on Amazon.
