Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova is currently in prison for protesting the collusion between
church and state. She also has a long
history of demonstrating on behalf of women’s issues. One would think her face would be on
countless hipsters’ t-shirts. Given her
supermodel looks, her likeness would certainly be more appealing than ugly old Che. However, Tolokonnikova and the other members
of her punk rock band were objecting to the authoritarian Putin regime’s increasingly
brazen abuses of power. It might not
interest professional activists in the West, but their ongoing plight is as
dramatic as true stories get. The
persecution of Russia’s most famous underground band is documented in Mike
Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Pussy
Riot—A Punk Prayer,
which
screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.
Sort
of like a real world version of the musical tricksters seen in Simonsson &
Nilsson’s films, the balaclava-donning Pussy Riot specialized in provocative,
unannounced public performances.
Critical of both the Putin regime and traditional Russian patriarchal
(or chauvinistic) attitudes, their lyrics have always been pointedly
political. While they certainly ruffled
some feathers before, Pussy Riot’s decision to crash Moscow’s Cathedral of
Christ the Savior was admittedly a profound miscalculation.
While
the thirty second performance was intended as a political commentary on the
open alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin’s government, the
resulting outrage amongst the faithful allowed prosecutors to come down on band
with the full force of the state. Soon
thereafter, Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were
behind bars, facing trial on vaguely defined charges.
The
reasonably well informed should know the broad strokes of the regime’s campaign
against Pussy Riot, but Lerner & Pozdorovkin give viewers a look beneath
their brightly colored hoods. Over the
course of the doc, the audience learns the three imprisoned musicians are
deeply steeped in the contemporary art scene and earnestly committed to causes
like environmentalism and democratic reform.
Far from being the maladjusted delinquents of state-sponsored
propaganda, they are profoundly influenced by supportive, well educated fathers,
who are quite compelling during their on-camera interview segments.
