By Pussy Riot was back in the news following the 11-day hunger strike of Maria Alyokhina. Alyokhina started the hunger strike on May 22 to protest the conditions of her imprisonment, which she claimed turned other inmates against her. The Russian government buckled and relaxed some of the security checks that were in place. Score one for Pussy Riot.
Alyokhina’s defiance, like Pussy Riot’s performance protests, are the best expression of the Bertolt Brecht quotation that opens the documentary Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer: “Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.” This is also an expression of punk as subversion and negation, an idea explored in Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces.
Art in the face of government oppression is always ballsy since the state is always more powerful than the artist. Beyond the transgressive name, it’s the symbolism that makes Pussy Riot compelling, almost superheroic — women in bright clothes and balaclavas against the wrath of Vladimir Putin.
If only this documentary was half as punk rock as them.
[For the next two weeks we will be covering the 2013 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York, which runs from June 13th to June 23rd. The films at the festival are dedicated to bringing awareness to human rights issues around the world and laying the groundwork for justice and change. For more information and a full schedule, visit ff.hrw.org.]
Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer
Directors: Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin
Rating: NR
Release Date: June 10, 2013 (HBO air date)
On February 21, 2012, five members of the art collective Pussy Riot entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow as part of a protest against Putin’s re-election. They removed their coats and began to dance to their song “Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away” before being escorted from the premises by security. In March of 2012, Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were arrested. They were put on trial, convicted of blasphemy and hooliganism, and each sentenced to two years in a penal colony.
Given the urgency of the situation, the international groundswell of support, the wider view of what this means for Putin’s Russia and its future (or, more importantly, the future of its people), I expected a whole lot more out of Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer. At the very least, I expected the documentary to embody a more boisterous spirit of outrage, but the outrage is subdued. I expected the soundtrack to be jagged, angular, and agitated like the promo above — i.e., music by Pussy Riot or like Pussy Riot. Apart from a smattering of Pussy Riot songs and “Free Pussy Riot” by Peaches, the score is quiet and blunt-edged, the sort of thing you’d hear in a TV courtroom drama or the talky parts of a police procedural.
I hoped to hear voices from Russian youths — even if those voices were distorted to protect identity — but they are not included. I also hoped to hear from other members of Pussy Riot still free in the wild — balaclavas on, of course, so they can continue to make prank art — but none of them are interviewed; their cause and their deeper thoughts on punk, performance art, feminism, LGBT rights, activism, human rights, political oppression, and protest go unexplored. I wanted other artists out there (Kathleen Hanna, Ian MacKaye, Jello Biafra, anyone) to talk about art as transgression, subversion, negation, a presentation of alternatives, and how Pussy Riot fits into all this, but none are interviewed.
Instead of the above, co-directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin have created an uneven primer on Pussy Riot that doesn’t delve as deep as it can. You can learn a lot more about Pussy Riot simply by reading the Wikipedia page; you can learn more about Putin’s Russia by occasionally reading the news. The documentary is mostly comprised of courtroom footage, which in its best moments present the absurdities of the Pussy Riot trial with a fair amount of objectivity. Throughout the hearings, the imprisoned trio sit in a glass box, like china in a cabinet. And yet as effective as some of this courtroom footage is, I longed for a molding principle for the rest of the content, whether it be an interesting frame of ideas or a moment when a thesis would be pounded out in the form of a film. There is just the Brecht quotation at the beginning, not necessarily the quotation in action.
Part of me was also expecting a certain amount of additional access in this documentary. Here I’m thinking about the first Paradise Lost documentary from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the film that helped free the West Memphis Three. Obviously Lerner and Pozdorovkin wouldn’t be able to meet with the members of Pussy Riot regularly like Berlinger and Sinofsky were able to do with the West Memphis Three, but Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer tantalized me with possibilities and then dropped them without sufficient exploration.
The best example of that may come from interviews with the parents of the Pussy Riot members, who share anecdotes and express personal feelings about what their daughters have done. The same can be said of the footage of Pussy Riot in action, whether in the Moscow cathedral or in Red Square. This material feels vital because we’re learning about each of these women and how their personalities play into their art and activism. Tolokonnikova emerges as a de facto leader of the group given her history of controversial performance art in Russia.
Someone mentions that Russia has never understood what the performance art scene is all about, which made me wonder about previous acts of protest art in Russia or in the Soviet Union. Is there a precedent for Pussy Riot beyond the Dadaists and Situationists that underlie punk and performance art? An underground history within Russian culture that these women carry forward? Other mighty screams in the past echoed here in their call for a new possibility in the future? And what about Voina, the street/performance art collective that the arrested Pussy Riot members were all former members of?
Like so much else in Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, it’s not looked into.
I at least admire Lerner and Pozdorovkin for getting this film out there quickly while the interest is high and while the story is still fresh in memory. (The footage was shot and edited in less than a year.) Maybe the documentary can help release the remaining Pussy Riot members, or at least churn up interest in the case again. Added scrutiny on Putin, Russian regression, and human rights abuses is always a good thing, as are reminders of the importance of dissent. It just disappoints me that the film feels like a work in progress of an unfolding story, or maybe an opening salvo that’s off target. I think the reason I’m being so hard on Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer is because I really wanted to like it and felt that it could have been something much more than just timely.
The documentaries that follow Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer should be more interesting, particularly once all members are out of prison and able to speak directly to what matters to them. One thing I’m interested in, though: there are conflicting stories about a falling out between Samutsevich and the other two members of Pussy Riot. Through some legal wrangling, Samutsevich was released on probation in October 2012. Some news outlets say that there’s been a fissure, Samutsevich denies this.
In Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, the moment of Samtsevich’s release is given a kind of triumphant note. There’s a tension in that footage since all three women are in the box and one gets to leave. The fate of the other two is uncertain. The same goes for the collective itself. Samtsevich has said that she’s unsure if the remaining members of Pussy Riot will be able to perform again given the fear of prosecution. Last week, two other members of Pussy Riot appeared in New York to connect with activists and keep the issue alive. The New York Times reported that they watched a screening of the documentary last Wednesday at the Landmark Sunshine. They sat at the back of the theater with their masks off, anonymous.
The question about Pussy Riot I’m most interested in won’t be answered in a film but in lived history: who will be holding the hammer in the end?
Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer screens at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival on Monday, June 17 and Tuesday, June 18. For tickets and more information, click here.
