Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Pokazatelnyy protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot)

PUSSY RIOT:  A PUNK PRAYER (Pokazatelnyy protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot) – made for TV          B-    
Russia  Great Britain  (88 mi)  2013  d:  Max Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner 

Art is not a mirror to reflect the world,
but a hammer with which to shape it. 
—Bertolt Brecht

Pussy Riot is an interesting phenomenon, a performance art collective that takes on the persona of a feminist punk band to spread its subversive message of feminist power and freedom, formed on August 2011, the same day Vladimir Putin announced he would be a candidate for Russian President after having already served two consecutive terms, the maximum allowed in Russia.  While protests and demonstrations took to the street, none had the impact of this Riot Grrl act, something of an outcry of a rebellious Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kills in The Punk Singer (2013), as it was clearly designed as a challenge of freedom of speech under the authoritarian rule of Putin, where 3 girls in the band, Nadia Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and Katia Samutsevich were sentenced to 2 years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” which is seen as little more than trumped up charges everywhere else in the world except Russia, a country that simply doesn’t understand performance art or punk music.  In her testimony before the court, one of the girls (Katia) claimed there was only one single university throughout the entire country of Russia that even acknowledges modern art exists, the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia where she graduated.  On the day in question, several Pussy Riot girls wearing ski masks stormed the altar at the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and tried to plug in their guitars and sing an anti-Putin message, though this protest only lasted 40 seconds before the police hauled them away.  That church in particular, according to the group, was chosen as it’s where the orthodox priests gave Putin their blessing over Easter services, uniting the church and state into one absolute autocracy.  The film shows excerpts of the arrest, brief performance tapes, the police interrogation, and the ensuing trial where the girls were kept behind a protective glass cage, supposedly for the public’s safety?  While they acknowledge they are completely non-violent and have no intent to hurt or harm anyone, their message is simply designed as a provocative act of liberation.    

To the West, Russia is synonymous with a 20th century revolutionary uprising, where the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is one of the notable achievements in Russian history, Ten Days that Shook the World, where the absolute power of the Czar was turned over to the masses.  So why would they now be afraid of a few girls with guitars?  Pussy Riot had done a few earlier performances, all spontaneously erupting in public places, recorded on YouTube, wearing ski masks, waving banners, holding flares as they create a brash attitude of punk anarchy and rebellion.  These events, however, are little more than publicity stunts, designed to go viral over the Internet, where young people are more affected as nearly all of them follow updated events on their iPhones.  What set this event apart was that it took place in the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world, where the church turned to its religious zealots to bring their outrage to the extreme nationalists of Putin, where together they joined forces in declaring Nadia a “demon with a brain,” actually taking seriously the satiric notion that she was out to destroy the church, calling the event blasphemy, suggesting she would have been burned in the 16th century, an act of condemnation they obviously find acceptable, where one of the church elders sums it all up with the chilling commentary, “There have always been witches that wouldn’t repent.” The church floods the streets with outraged parishioners, while State TV shows condemn the group for their religious disrespect, all demanding severe punishment.   Even Putin went on record in a television interview and claimed “they got what they asked for.”  One of the more interesting segments is the all-male police interrogation, where Katia is asked if she wants to get married and have children (Nadia is already married, while she and Masha already have children), and she responds that this is what they’ve always been “told” what girls should want, that really many girls, including herself, have no interest whatsoever.  To many Putinists and orthodox Russians, this belief seems to signify their actual crime.  

While the Pussy Riot’s lawyers called the arrests “cynical and unlawful,” the trial itself was seen as a show trial presented before the public, drawing unprecedented international press coverage, where the complaining witnesses, one by one, ended up being a stream of church parishioners, where the outcome felt predetermined all along, as the State’s moral authority, as represented by that infamous alignment between Putin and the Orthodox Church, held their ground.  The solidarity of the girls throughout is impressive, maintaining a defiant sense of humor, believing they held the higher moral ground, where their humorous stunts and TV court appearances declaring the whole process a farce would only earn them legions of supporters.  Before pronouncing sentencing, however, each of the defendants was allowed a final comment, where Nadia indicated “Pussy Riot is a form of oppositional art, political action that utilizes artistic forms.  It is a form of civic activism against a corporate political system that uses its power against basic human rights.”  The three were sentenced to two years in prison.  Two of the Pussy Riot members, Nadia and Katia (who was eventually released on appeal as it was proven she “didn’t” do as accused, as she was arrested before she could even get the guitar strap off her shoulder, never singing or playing a single note), were also members of Voina since 2007, an anarchist art collective where one of their earlier stunts posted to the Internet was photographing several members, including an 8-month pregnant Nadia, getting naked and having sex in a Russian Biology Museum, a satirist response to President Medvedev’s announcement to increase the birth rate in Russia.  Perhaps the ultimate irony of this made-for-TV documentary about such politically inspired performance artists is such a conventional, by-the-numbers approach in making a movie about them, as they obviously deserve better.  Throughout the film, Pussy Riot never actually sings an entire song, even the theme song playing over the end credits turns out to be Peaches and Simonne Jones singing “Free Pussy Riot.”

Postscript
After having served 21 months of a 24-month sentence, the remaining two Pussy Riot girls, Nadia and Masha, were released just after Christmas of 2013 under a recently passed Amnesty law that allowed their early release without ever admitting to any crime. 

Reprise

REPRISE                     A        
Norway (105 mi)  2006  d:  Joachim Trier           Official site [us]

Inexplicably, this film opened very favorably in Europe two years ago but is only now finding its way to an American release despite having enormous energy and appeal.  Joachim Trier, born in Denmark and twice Norway’s skateboard champion during his teens while also making several skateboard videos at the time, is a cousin of Danish director Lars von Trier, who at some point in his life felt the need to add the mysterious “von” to his name.  Since the mid 90’s, Danish films have undergone a revival on the world’s stage, producing some of the most prominent directors working today, such as Lars von Trier’s THE KINGDOM (1994), BREAKING THE WAVES (1996), DANCER IN THE DARK (2000), and DOGVILLE (2003), Thomas Vinterberg’s THE CELEBRATION (1998), Soren Kragh-Jacobsen’s MIFUNE (1999), Lone Scherfig’s ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (2001), Susanne Bier’s BROTHERS (2005) and AFTER THE WEDDING (2006), not to mention Lucas Moodysson in Swedish/Danish co-productions.  What all these films have in common are intelligent scripts and expert direction laying the foundation for some extraordinary performances, oftentimes by unheralded or non-professional actors, and this film is no exception.  The story about two longtime friends who aspire to be writers was written by the director along with his longtime friend, Eskil Vogt, wonderfully expressed from the opening scene when Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner) drop manuscripts into the mailbox of novels they have written while the narrator toys with the audience by suggesting various outcomes that “could” happen, playfully using freeze frames and quick cuts always keeping viewers a bit off guard, much of it conveyed through a glorious montage of Nordic culture on parade in Oslo (with effective change of speed) that plays to the pulsating punk rhythms of Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades” Reprise movie cuts where Joy Division - New Dawn Fades sounds in background YouTube (3:17).  While Phillip is immediately recognized as a vibrant new talent, Erik’s spirits deflate in the opposite direction when he hears nothing from publishers, thinking he is an abysmal failure.  But just as quickly, Phillip suffers a mysterious breakdown that may or may not have anything to do with his relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge), a gorgeous, immensely appealing young girl he obviously still has affections for—all this in the first ten minutes of the film.   

Phillip doesn’t seem to be himself, finding his memory and his interests waning ever further from his grasp, including his mixed up feelings for Kari which frustrate him, as they’re not as vivid as he recalls, adding to his morose view that he has somehow lost touch with the world, shown with a delicate touch, including the quietest, somber music from Ola Fløttum and Knut Schreiner.  At one point we flash forward six days, at another point it’s six months, using an imaginative editing style that keeps moving back and forth in time while remaining focused on the intimate friendship of the two who are collectively part of a close circle of friends, most all of them as well read and smart as they are, which serves as a combustible engine that drives this film with untiring interest and energy, much of it hilarious from the outset, as these guys are endlessly critical of everyone and everything they see, yet are still good natured goofs with one another, where one is a lead singer in a punk band that offers a rousing contemptuous view of the world with songs like “Fingerfuck the Prime Minister.”  When Erik finally hears from an interested publisher that his new novel will be published immediately, he garners all the attention and acclaim that Phillip has been avoiding.  Yet this is not necessarily a good thing for a writer.  Voracious readers when they were younger, both idolized a legendary writer, Sten Egil Dahl (Sigmund Sæverud), who became the voice of his generation before retreating from public view in order to write.   Both feel a connection to hold onto the good natured camaraderie of their friends, yet also stake out an unknown territory within that requires further exploration through writing, a solitary endeavor at odds with social relationships.  Phillip’s intense personal struggle to reclaim what his brain can do is equivalent to the practice of writing itself, where nothing is assured except an internal struggle, shut off from the world outside, just one man alone with his own challenges.  This entire film is a beautiful journey, a quest for meaning, where friends can’t help blurting out their thoughts with each other, blending, in a beautiful way, all their pent up anger and irritation as well as happiness and joy that are so easily interchanged right alongside moments of sadness and gloom.

The actors themselves are noteworthy, suggesting such a fresh ease of comfort in their performances, where the lack of artifice and complete believability is part of the film’s appeal, with an ensemble cast whose distinguishing characteristic is intelligence.  A few notable scenes, Phillip and Kari’s return to Paris where they initially met which couldn’t this time have been more excruciatingly painful to watch, bookended later by his abrupt pronouncement at her workplace, barging in on the mindless repetition of telemarketing offering her only the slightest idea of hope, perhaps the most vulnerable moment in the film where that adrenal rush of hope can be annihilated within seconds yet instead feels like a sudden breakthrough of possibilities.  But certainly the best moment in the film is the sustained brilliance of the party sequence, which relishes its own brand of humor, where the young lads turn the place upside down with the help of an iPod, where the frantically alive music of Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” Reprise clip YouTube (2:28) is simply irresistible, perhaps a last bloom of youth where they can do whatever the hell they please before the inevitable onset of adulthood and responsibilities set in, where hard fought principles disappear overnight as they suddenly become all that they found irritating earlier in life.  This is an extraordinary depiction of youth rarely seen in films, as it all feels like we’ve been there before, yet it also offers the best and the brightest with smart, crackling dialogue that doesn’t take itself for granted, that offers a fresh wit with surprising originality throughout, continually altering the pace of the film, weaving in the collective imagination of art, mixing the painfully alone and meticulous work habits with the socially gregarious, leaving open a world of maybes, of what could have been, where multiple ideas literally jump off the screen simply by the way the story is told.  There’s enough of an edge that it capitulates to no one, with some brilliant use of music, excellent hand-held camera work from Jakob Ihre, and despite a taut structure, Trier allows the freewheeling improvisational nature of his characters the uninhibited freedom to penetrate our souls with brash audacity.   

The Punk Singer

Kathleen Hanna at 17 from her blog

 

THE PUNK SINGER         B+                       

USA  (80 mi)  2013  d:  Sini Anderson 

BECAUSE we girls want to create mediums that speak to US.  We are tired of boy band after boy band, boy zine after boy zine, boy punk after boy punk after boy… BECAUSE we need to talk to each other.  Communication/inclusion is the key.  We will never know if we don’t break the code of silence… BECAUSE in every form of media we see us/myself slapped, decapitated, laughed at, objectified, raped, trivialized, pushed, ignored, stereotyped, kicked, scorned, molested, silenced, invalidated, knifed, shot, choked and killed.  BECAUSE a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit.

We want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can't play our instruments, in the face of 'authorities' who say our band/zines/etc are the worst... Because we don't wanna assimilate to some else's (boy) standards of what art is... Because we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary 'reverse sexists' AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW WE we real are... Because I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

—Riot Grrl Manifesto (excerpts), early-90's

Girls to the front. Boys to the back.  Back, back.  All boys be cool for once in your lives.

—Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kills

An exhilarating, all-in look at Kathleen Hanna and the early stages of girl power in punk music in the early 90’s, where Hanna’s earliest musical interests were unleashed through fanzines, homemade booklets with creative artworks celebrating particular music acts and the power of expression.  Eventually she got the attention of one of her underground heroes, Kathy Acker, the writer of Blood and Guts in High School, one of the original underground, mixed-media feminist publications that challenged social taboos, giving voice to subjects that were largely silenced or severely limited by mainstream media, such as rape, abortion, incest, pornography, and domestic violence.  Acker believed in challenging the male-centric power structures by continually giving voice to this restricted territory, by taking ownership of these issues.  An art student at Evergreen State College from Olympia, Washington, Hannah was angry from the dismissive media coverage of Anita Hill’s sexual harassment claims against a sitting (for life) Supreme Court justice, the Tailhook scandal, the William Kennedy Smith trial, and an article in Time magazine that asked if feminism was dead, all happening at a time when she was trying to process the rape and murder of her roommate.  In 1991 Hannah entered Slam poetry festivals where she’d wail at the top of her lungs “I am your worst nightmare come to life.  I’m a girl that won’t shut up,” stomping onstage and shouting “I’m going to tell EVERYONE!”  It was Acker who told her that nobody comes to Slam fests but other performers, that “if you want to be heard, start a band,” which couldn’t have been better advice, as her screaming angry defiance onstage perfectly fit the profile of a punk rock lead singer, where she literally fused feminism with punk rock.  Gathering around her best friends, girls she could trust, they quickly formed Bikini Kill, where her badass onstage performance was inspiring to other young girls, where she’d scrawl “slut” in lipstick across her stomach, adopt a Valley Girl accent, dance aggressively and stomp around the stage in underwear or a miniskirt, while bringing girls in the audience to the front and sending boys to the back, where most importantly she was defining herself on her own terms.

The band actively sought to create a physical safe space for women at shows, making this a policy of bringing them to the front at their performances, where they could even sit onstage, as this was the boy era of mosh pits and crowd surfing, which could get excessively physical, intimidating and often injuring girls who came anywhere near, developing a Riot Grrl Manifesto, “We are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak,” a revolutionary call to action refusing to assimilate to male standards that was published in a Bikini Kill fanzine in 1991, which showed early on she was a force to be reckoned with.  “I’m so sorry if I’m alienating some of you/Your whole fucking culture alienates me," sings Hanna in "White Boy" Bikini Kill - White Boy - YouTube (2:15), a song that still resonates with a fury, as some twenty years later the music industry continues to generate rape culture lyrics and imagery, while a subject the newscasts still routinely omit is the prevalence of rape in the military, where according to Kirby Dick’s eye-opening film The Invisible War (2012), more than 20% of currently serving female veterans will be sexually assaulted, while less than 3% of the identified rapists will ever be convicted.  It’s enough to make anyone angry, and from 1991 – 1999 it was a glorious era for Riot grrls, where Hanna insisted “I’m not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody’s boot around my neck,” berating men in the audience from the microphone for behaving like jerks, literally daring other young girls to follow.  She was sexy, she was angry, and she was defiant as she strutted the stage with a supreme confidence, proclaiming “We want a revolution!”  One of the best pieces of archival footage shows Hannah as a full-throttled frontwoman for Bikini Kill singing at the top of her lungs to Mohawk-cut punk boys who are literally inches away from her staring her down, confessing “Every show we played was like a war.”  Her uncompromising spirit has had a tremendous influence, even if her bewildering mixture of overt sexuality and confrontational anger, not to mention her insistence on the word “girl,” has been tamed and co-opted by today’s consumer market.

While there’s really not a negative word heard anywhere in this picture, becoming something of a love fest, the mostly female cast of supporting voices includes Hanna’s Riot grrl sisters-in-arms Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, and several music and culture critics, including Ann Powers and Jennifer Baumgardner.  While the unadulterated praise is unanimous, it also appears genuine, which is the prevailing theme throughout, without which this would be just another ordinary profile.  Hannah is credited with coming up with the title of Nirvana’s 1991 rock anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” spray painting it on Kurt Cobain’s wall, which he reinterpreted with a revolutionary meaning for an apathetic generation.  Hole’s Courtney Love, Cobain’s eventual wife, sucker-punched Hannah backstage during Sonic Youth’s performance at Lollapalooza in the summer of 1995.  Hannah filed charges against Love, who remembered nothing as she was high on drugs at the time, and prevailed in court, challenging Love to “a feminist debate at the university of her choice.”  Hannah dropped out of sight in 2005, officially retiring from the music industry, where many felt she abandoned the very issues she was advocating.  But the film reveals a mysterious illness sidelined her literally for years before it was finally diagnosed as late stage Lyme disease in 2010, causing chronic neurological symptoms, an illness that can be managed, but often gets worse before it gets better.  Her resilience has been impressive, as this debilitating illness has taken nearly a decade out of her life, where half that time the worst part was living with the fear of not knowing what was causing her to be so sick.  But Hannah is a woman who has pushed personal crusades into worldwide movements, who has fought to overcome antifeminist ignorance in the mainstream press, where early in her career she had to stage a complete press blackout due to negative depictions that belittled and distorted her activism, refusing to allow the media afterwards to frame her message targeting bullied teen girls and young women.  Hannah is seen as surprisingly intelligent, introspective, and tough, where her impact is perhaps most felt with similarly smart middle class white girls, but her message of empowerment has grown since the Riot Grrl days, broadening her field of vision to include battered women, rape victims, gays, lesbians, and the transgendered.  Her influence has spread to Russia and the jailed Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova, an anti-Putin punk rock feminist sentenced to two years in prison for defying the established male order, a political expression of women’s liberation rooted in the Riot Grrl movement.