If you want to get an insight into Putin’s Russia check out Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, a documentary by a British and a Russian director about the official reaction to a performance by female punk band Pussy Riot in a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow.
The documentary, which had its Australian premiere at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, opens with Pussy Riot singing “Mother of God, deliver us from Putin” on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, bang smack in the middle of a church service.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina followed the time honoured tradition of the 19th century anarchists of using public attention to put forward their political manifesto of defiance. Their trademark brightly coloured balaclavas on their heads, they interrupted a religious service with a punk performance that lasted 40 seconds before it was violently terminated.
A few weeks later three members of the band were charged with hooliganism: two were sentenced to two years in prison and a third, who apologised for causing offence, received a suspended sentence.
If Pussy Riot intended to shock and create outrage, they certainly succeeded. In fact they offended the government led by Vladimir Putin, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church and many thousands of believers.
The documentary uses badly shot mobile phone footage of the performance spliced with interviews with family members, amazing court sequences and demonstrations by band supporters to take the viewer into this contemporary Moscow story.
Whilst the directors, Sundance award-winning British director Mike Lerner and his Russian co-partner Maxim Pozdorovk, have an obvious bias towards the women they also include footage of pro-government, pro-church demonstrations.
As a result the documentary escapes the stereotypical left analysis that all protest against authority is good and tries to portray an honest picture of the whole story.
Clandestine rehearsals in empty warehouses on the outskirts of Moscow add drama while interviews with Nazi look-alike Orthodox Church supporters are fascinating and unexpected.
Previous Pussy Riot protests had attracted attention and criminal penalties for breaking the peace but the women were unprepared for the storm unleashed by this action in one of Russia’s most sacred monuments. What in their eyes was performance art was received in conservative quarters as pornographic sacrilege.
But the government’s reaction to their performance has shocked the world. When US pop star Madonna stripped to reveal the words ‘Pussy Riot’ on her torso, she expressed widespread international support for the two Russian women jailed. Yoko Ono added her support and Amnesty International designated the women prisoners of conscience.
The documentary took out the Special Jury Prize (World Cinema- Documentary) at the Sundance Film Festival.
http://youtu.be/4QzblZ-Dg0U
